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This ice cream recipe is almost too good to be believed - so rich, creamy and luscious, you'd never know it's fat-free, dairy-free, and with no added sugar or preservatives, is even good for you!
It only takes one ingredient to make this dreamy dessert - can you guess what it is?? (without looking at the next step)
You may argue that without dairy, this has no place being called "ice cream." But I challenge you to try this recipe, and tell me it doesn't taste EXACTLY like ice cream! Prepare to be amazed.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out the link to thekitchn's great post on this time-honored recipe!
It only takes one ingredient to make this dreamy dessert - can you guess what it is?? (without looking at the next step)
You may argue that without dairy, this has no place being called "ice cream." But I challenge you to try this recipe, and tell me it doesn't taste EXACTLY like ice cream! Prepare to be amazed.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out the link to thekitchn's great post on this time-honored recipe!
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Signing UpStep 1Ingredients
Did you guess our secret ingredient?
BANANAS!
I find bananas that have turned brown work best for this. You may already peel and freeze your bananas for smoothies or breads or dipping in chocolate. Now you can use them to make this luscious ice cream in no time at all!
BANANAS!
I find bananas that have turned brown work best for this. You may already peel and freeze your bananas for smoothies or breads or dipping in chocolate. Now you can use them to make this luscious ice cream in no time at all!
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Hope this will help!
other fruits work too?
seeing this makes me wish i liked bananas....
the frozen bananas were, of course, darkened, because that's what you do, you use bananas ready for banana bread, right? well, the color of them when they were frozen and smooshed in the bag simply darkened as they began to melt. never got white and frothy. i ran the blender some more, wondering if magic might start to happen a bit later. worried b/c the bottom of the mixture was getting stirred, but the top was sitting there in a sort-of gelatinous mass. i tilted the blender to encourage the stuff on top to get mixed in, and even stopped to stir.
what came off of the spoon wasn't even cold: the blades had generated enough heat to completely melt any trace of freeziness. i ended up with slightly-more-blended, smooshed banana. basically what i put into the freezer in the first place.
my wife was there with me, b/c we were planning to eat a yummy freezy banana treat, and she just kept laughing and insisting the whole thing was a big elaborate hoax. that no one could possibly have ended up with something that resembles ice cream, and that everyone else who left comments was in on the hoax. so, my point is: don't get a blender just for this treat. you may feel that you, too, have become the brunt of a giant hoax.
anyone else have this experience when attempting to make this?
My tips:
I figured maybe I had let the bananas go too long, so tried a second batch. This time I froze the peeled bananas when the skins were slightly brown, but the bananas were still white. EXACT same result. The banana "cream" tasted just as rotten as the first batch.
My guess is, unless you like the taste of way over-ripened bananas, you'll have to freeze the bananas when they are still fresh. I'm going to try that next. (Though I don't know if the freezing process itself is actually producing that "over-ripe banana" flavor.)
On another note, I find that if you add enough chocolate, caramel, nuts, and fruits to the "ice cream" it's almost edible, but that probably rather defeats the purpose.
I find it interesting that you used the word "hoax" as this is exactly the word my own girlfriend used when we tried it the first time. She refused to even taste it the second time around. Hopefully third time's the charm!
I think the point of this recipe is that the banana's need to be frozen whole, or at least in large chunks, and not 'smooshed', because smooshing them before frozen actually speeds up the browning process (oxidation) and releases a lot of the water content. When done as the instructable says, the frozen banana's first blend into an almost bread crumb like consistency, before taking on the smooth and silky texture described.
I do have to mention that I intially had some trouble getting it beyond the crumbly mixture, but that's mainly because I was using my stick blender with the little bowl attachement, and in the end just transferred it to the mixing cup and using the stick attachment, and it worked beautifully.
Don't be scared to try this again =P freeze the banana's whole!
the ice cream tasted like rotten bananas