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This recipe has been making the Healthy Living Blogs. I haven't tried it yet because I like the real stuff :)

Ooh, I like this idea. I'll have to try it. This time of year, my bananas go black so quickly so this is a perfect way to use them up. Thanks!

Can't wait to try this; I have a bunch of frozen bananas in the freezer and it's too hot to make banana bread!

Off to put bananas in the freezer...

In the wintertime when there's no good fruit in season, I make smoothies in the blender with frozen bananas, peanut butter, milk, and a squirt of chocolate syrup. I've always been amazed at how they taste like a milkshake with real ice cream!

Now if only I didn't hate bananas.

Phew- I was worried that the "one ingredient" would be non-dairy creamer.

I can hardly wait to ruin the entire healthy aspect by putting Magic Shell on a scoop of this...

tried it and it is yummy

Ah! There is a organic/health food type restaurant place on the boardwalk at home where this is their signature dessert! They call it a banana whip and you can get it with loads of different toppings. SO GOOD- just gets a bit gummy if you take ages to eat it.

They shove the bananas through this grinder thing and they come out on the other side looking like ice cream.

I've been making frozen banana and peanut butter protein smoothies (with milk added) for breakfast in the summer for years, but I've never tried it with just the bananas. The time to try is now I guess!

This is a pretty common dessert for "raw" dieters. @Loverachel - I probably saw the same grinder device used at a local vegan place. Not sure what it was.

one of my favorite snacks is frozen banana slices. Need to try this now. mmm

So that photo above is this banana ice "cream"? Can you confirm that please?

I have a lot of frozen bananas in my freezer which I usually use during the winter to make banana bread, cake, muffins, but they don't look like anything would make them turn into what you show above.

Sounds great! I've been making smoothies with frozen bananas and vanilla soy milk for years, but never thought to leave out the soy. I'll have to give this a try.

ohhhh I have banana's in the freezer and it is too hot to bake so now I can have an alternative to use them for - tell your sister thank you!

@Charlotte, yes, that is the banana "ice cream." That's what's so surprising about it: it gets all creamy like that after you run the frozen bananas through the food processor.

Oh my goodness! Yes! I have bananas in the fridge that were not handling the summer heat, and this is a great solution for them!

Emily

My mother did this in the mid-50s. She would serve the frozen banana "ice cream" on top of hot gingerbread, and was it wonderful.

I've been doing this for awhile, though not with just bananas - I freeze bananas in bite-size pieces then add them to crushed ice, milk (about enough to allow the ice to peak through), cinnamon, vanilla, and some sweetener. Frappe the mixture in a blender until smooth and it a hydrating, healthy "shake" that is less dense than just bananas.

Okay, Faith, so you must have re-frozen it and scooped it? Because in the description you say "soft serve" but that photo looks like regular ice cream to me. I WANT to believe, but before I go whirring up all my frozen bananas I want some reassurance that I'm going to get something that really is like ice cream. You took the picture, so I assume you can give me the details!

Awesome, now I just need bananas.

Can you then re-freeze the 'ice cream' after you've blended up the bananas?

Yes I've tried this and yes it's wonderful. It almost has the texture of soft serve ice cream.

I just made it and this is amazing!! I'm so surprised how creamy it is! I'm not one for "substitutes" or the made-healthy versions of things, but this is just excellent on it's own merits.

I'm also wondering how well it holds up if you blend it and then put it in the freezer- does it get rock-hard if you re-freeze? Must get more bananas and experiment.

OK, on the texture - I didn't mean to be misleading when I said soft serve, but yes, the texture is just like ice cream, with that almost gooey softness that comes in soft serve (as opposed to harder, stiffer custards). Subjective, though, I suppose.

Anyway, yes! You can blend it and re-freeze it. These particular scoops were part of a batch that has been frozen for a few days.

I love frozen green grapes. I wonder how chopped frozen grapes in the banana ice cream would be.

Faith--you're hilarious. I've been dreaming about ice cream with Magic Shell (which is a once-every-5-years treat for me) all day with our hot weather.

oh dear lord. I just tried it--I had to know if it was true... and IT IS. and I'm hard to please!!!

after discovering that yes, you can blend a frozen banana into amazingness, I added no more than a tablespoon of peanut butter and a couple spoonfuls of hot chocolate mix.

I think I need a cigarette.

Hahaha I'm just like the others- had to try it to believe. I had 6 frozen bananas in the freezer, waiting to be made into banana bread at some point. Anyway, I whipped them up in the blender and they created an AMAZING, delicious, creamy, HEALTHY snack that will accompany me through Top Chef tonight (don't u always get hungry watching it? i have to have a snack).

@Charlotte- it's true! Def worth a try. I'll be making this again in the future.

I am devastated. I hate, and man - do I mean HATE, bananas. Bleck. Oh well. I guess the old school way will have to work for me.

Bananas, dates, almond milk, and almond butter...oh my!

Yum! I'm on a cleanse right now so this looks perfect! One question though. Did you freeze the frozen banana goo after you pureed it to make it look so perfect in the photos?

Wow! Off to try this. Always have some leftover bananas.

I made this last night with a teaspoon of peanut butter and it was amazing! So easy and it tasted so good! I love the idea to add chocolate - I bet you could add plain cocoa powder since it's already sweet from the banana.

do you think this would work with other frozen fruit - or what is special about bananas?

If you use 7oz of bananas, you get 5 grams of fiber from this frozen deliciousness! That's not too shabby for such a tasty treat!

Oh my god, THANK YOU! I always have leftover, over-ripe bananas but never have the foresight to do anything with them so they always end up in the trash. Now I can just move them to the freezer!

LOVE THIS**!
As a happy vegan, I have been doing this for years!
Just peel (slightly overripe) bananas and freeze whole in freezer, then puree as needed.
Try adding frozen melons (like honeydew) to the bananas for added flavour along with protein powder, carob & hemp seeds to make it super duper healthy! Yummy!

I've been doing this for quite a few years now, and banana can be used as a base to get the creamy texture. I add frozen berries, frozen peaches frozen ANY fruit.. making sure you always have at least 1/2 the quantity of banana total.
For a special treat I like to add chocolate chips, or make a chocolate ganache and pour it over like a sunday. YUM! and healthy :)

To make a health great shake just add any of those non dairy beverages such as rice milk, almond milk etc

The grinder thingy is probably a Vita-Mix. All the range among health-foody types. Apparently they are much better than blenders. Kat James (author of The Truth About Beauty) says she uses it to make "ice cream" from all kinds of frozen fruit.

you can add other ingredients for flavor, check out my recipe:
http://marmotasaidatoca.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/ultimate-banana-ice-cream/
enjoy!

Waiting for the bananas to freeze

I've tried this after reading about it on tons of healthy food blogs, and I have to say it's pretty good. The key is to really whip it in the food processor, for a good 3-5 minutes, and don't put too many bananas in at once!

Holy cow. I'm not that fond of bananas in any form other than how they normally come, but I think I might have to try this. Neat!

http://www.abreadaday.com

I have got to try this. I am going to tell my sister, but I doubt she will try it. I wish I could attach an hilarious photo I took of her freezer contents when I visited her earlier this summer. Three huge containers of Blue Bunny chocolate ice cream and two small packages of Smart Ones frozen dinners! Too funny....

Yeah, a month or two ago, someone showed me how to have bananas be an egg substitute when baking. So it's not hard to imagine that this would work.

I just read the same recipe a few days ago in Annabel Karmel's latest cookbook for children's food (my girlfriend often makes fresh food for our 10-month old son from AK's books). If you can get your hands on 'First Meals And More: Your Questions Answered' then check the recipe ('far-too-easy banana ice cream') out on page 119.

Do you peel first and then freeze, and if so do you cut them up first to smaller pieces?

emily7: The creaminess of this dish is a bit specific to bananas. Bananas are one of the few fruits that contain a bit of fat (about 1 gram of fat per cup or so) which can make the blended finished product very smooth and creamy.

Most other fruits that you work with will make a lovely sorbet, but will not have the creamy, soft-serve texture of the whipped frozen bananas.

I hope this helps. I found out the hard way about the bit of fat by adding a chopped banana to my famous sangria. The acidity of the wine and other fruits made the banana slices turn into a mushy gelatinous mess in my otherwise wonderful summer punch. Big mistake...

a scoop of this over a hot waffle with maple syrup would be such an awesome special-occasion brunch dish....

Excellent idea!

There's another fruit that makes a superb, creamy, luscious one-ingredient ice cream: mamey! Never heard of it? Read more here:

http://www.sustainablesuppers.com/mamey/

This is awesome! Thanks for the trick.
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Fairh, you really never heard of this before? My mom made this all the time, probably because of my dad's dairy allergy. I assumed everybody knew about banana ice cream.

And to the banana-haters out there: try it before you knock it. I'm not a huge banana fan and I love this stuff. Much more mild than fresh bananas.

Did I say I LOVE this stuff??

Nice, this would have been great for my father who loved ice cream but, could not eat it due to a heart condition.

I'm sure in time many variations i.e., additions to make other flavors will come out. Vegans, are very creative people : )

I've been doing this for years. Even though this adds an ingredient, try incorporating whipped cream to the mixture before freezing...scrumptious.

I just busted a gut laughing about the one that said, "Now if I just didn't hate bananas."

Meanwhile, Pixie, I love me some frozen grapes, too! They're such a perfect little treat. Meanwhile, I wanna ruin my grapes with some Magic Shell!

I'm about to go away for the weekend, but I almost wish I'd be home so I could freeze some bananas!

I love this idea. Can't wait to try it. I wonder if it will work with avocados? What about Bacon?

So I read this post, ran to the store and bought bananas and popped them into the freezer a few days later.. just like the instructions said. What the instructions neglected to mention was the part where you should peel them first. I didn't see the comment saying to peel them first.. I think I'm the first person to use a knife to peel a banana haha!

I have a magic bullet.. I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but I hate that thing.. I tried to use it to make this and it didn't work at all. The tiny bit it did make was good though! But I did let my bananas sit for a bit, and I tend to like my bananas a bit green. I see someone said to use overripe.. but I'd say put them in in the state that you enjoy them at.. because I don't like them overripe, and they taste exactly the same as they do fresh!

I just finished making and eating this delicious treat! I'm a fan!!!
(My boyfriend just said, "Mmmm...I would not have expected this!")

I just tried it yesterday. True, it looks just like ice cream when you blend the bananas and refreeze them. But that's as far as it goes. Unless you love the taste of banana overload, you won't like this. There's no substitute for real ice cream. I even added some vanilla extract and cinnamon sugar to the the blended bananas but it still tasted just like bananas. If you want bananas, just eat a banana. Don't go through the trouble of freezing, blending and refreezing. If you want ice cream, buy it.

Being down with the flu, I was overjoyed to discover this BRAT-friendly cold thing. Now I wonder if the grinder attachment on a stand mixer (which demolishes cranberries for cranberry relish) might work, too?

I guess correctly! I just saw this on Rachael Ray the other day. I must try this...

So I tried this with frozen mixed berries - Blueberries, Raspberries and Blackberries and the outcome is a nice sorbet.....since I like a little tarty sorbets I did not add any sugar/honey.

I wonder how this would work with other sweet plantains. I have a bunch of platanos islas that are starting to get super ripe, and I don't feel like frying them.

I've been making smoothies with the platanos, frozen strawberries and drinkable vanilla yogurt.. it's delish!

WHOA THIS IS DELICIOUS. i just did it. can't believe it. try it! i added a little maple syrup and some almonds on top...awesome

Holy cow, I finally made this. It's an ice cream miracle....but....given that I did 4 or 5 bananas and it only made a serving for one (or a tiny serving for two) I wouldn't call this an economical way to make ice cream, monetarily or calorically. But it's a delicious frosty treat and definitely something I would do with KIDS!

it is economical when you consider the fruit would be thrown out if not used somehow.
I've done it and added a bit of Milo, strawberries and a large dash of Brandy.

Good tucker it was as well.

wow! this is cool. will have to try tonight!

I'm thinking Chunky Monkey (my favorite)!!!

I am wondering if this would work with my mini-food processor...sounds lovely with chocolate sauce...

@emtdmt, yes - I use a little food processor too. It's a 3-cup model and it works just fine with this recipe.

Ugh... too bad I'm allergic to bananas :-(

I did a variation of this recipe from a baby cookbook called "Simply Natural Baby Food" by Cathe Olson. The recipe adds a very ripe, (unfrozen) mashed avocado to the frozen banana. When our kids were little we called it "Mermaid Ice Cream" and it was a great way to get another healthy veggie into them.

For those who say it only tastes like pureed banannas and not ice cream add a 1/4 cup of orange juice for every banana. Add some vanilla extract to that and its not a bad substitute to ice cream.

It was amazing! worked for me with a little PB and soymilk. This is going into regular rotation in our kitchen!
Beth

I made some with greek yogurt and a teeny bit of plain soymilk. so yummy!