I love Donna Hay’s recipes, photography and food styling.  I was flicking through one of her recipe books  at mums and I found a really delicious looking recipe for chewy coconut macaron ice cream sandwiches.  I thought this would be an easy recipe to modify to be healthier, yet still super delicious so I gave it a go.  And what do you know, it worked!  Don’t you love it when that happens?

I switched out most of the sugar for stevia in the biscuits and replaced ice cream with banana berry or banana chocolate ice-cream (aka frozen fruit!).  There’s something quite magical about a crispy coconut biscuit filled with an icy cold sweet filling.  It’s the perfect combination.

The best thing is these are really easy to make.  The only fiddly bit is making the nice rounded macaroons and even doing that isn’t hard.

These make a yummy treat on a warm day and biscuits are also yummy by themselves (would be delicious dipped in a little dark chocolate too!).

Here’s how to make them:

Ingredients for  Coconut Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches

For the chewy coconut macarons:

2 egg whites
2 cups desiccated coconut
1/4 cup stevia
2 tablespoons caster sugar

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Place the egg whites, coconut, stevia and sugar in a bowl and mix to combine. Line a baking tray with non stick baking paper.   Place an egg ring or a large cookie cutter on the tray and add 2 tablespoons of the mixture (or a little more if need be). Press the mixture down evenly and firmly with the back of a spoon and remove the egg ring/cookie cutter.  Repeat with the remaining mixture to make around 10 macarons.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. Don’t let them get too brown, they should just be starting to turn a very light golden colour.  Leave to cool on the oven tray.

For the “ice cream”:

Healthy berry banana ‘ice cream’:
2 large frozen bananas
1/2 cup mixed berries

Chop the banana into chunks and place in a food processor with the mixed berries.  Blend until smooth and creamy.

Healthy chocolate banana ‘ice cream’
2 large frozen bananas
2 heaped teaspoons cocoa
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Chop the banana into chunks and place in a food processor with remaining ingredients.  Blend until smooth and creamy.

You may need to pop the ice cream mixes back into the freezer to harden a little.  If you leave it for too long it will go really hard and be difficult to scoop, but if this happens just leave out to soften for a little while.

To serve:

Scoop out the banana ice cream and sandwich between two macarons.  Eat, enjoy and try not to drip ice cream down your top 🙂