Engineer, Girly Girl, and I wanted a cool treat on a hot Friday afternoon last week. We had popsicles, but those just didn’t appeal to us very much. Then I remembered reading about using frozen bananas to make something akin to ice cream (but without all the sugar and dairy). So, off we went to experiment!
I first read about using frozen bananas to make “ice cream” in Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Check out his website here at Disease Proof. Thanks to Pinterest, I also found a recipe like this at Use Real Better.
We began by grabbing some ripe bananas out of the fruit bowl. I think this recipe would work very well those over-ripe bananas that we sometimes end up with. I cut the bananas up into chunks of about 1/2-inch before freezing them. I figured this would make it easier to blend once they were frozen.
Then I popped the banana slices into baggies and placed them in the freezer. It worked best for me to have a single layer of the banana slices so I could lay the baggies flat inside the freezer. Each baggie represents one medium banana — that way, I could portion those babies out.
Is it sad that I’m proud of how clean my freezer is right now?! Of course, losing all the food in the fridge and freezer earlier this month helped me get it this clean!
I think Dr. Fuhrman’s recipe suggests freezing the bananas for at least a day, but we weren’t patient enough to do that. We ended up leaving them in the freezer for just a few hours. They were frozen well enough by that point. I grabbed two baggies and put the frozen slices into my food processor.
Engineer and Girly Girl were excited to help out with the food processing. Apparently, it was a little noisy for them!
We added some chocolate peanut butter (about a tablespoon) to the bananas and mixed it up again. Then came the taste-testing! Engineer was a gentleman and made sure Girly Girl got the first spoonful.
Engineer loved it, while Girly Girl didn’t care for it as much after the first few bites.
Sorry this picture is blurry, but Engineer was shoveling it in so fast I couldn’t get a clear shot.
I thought it was delicious, but the consistency wasn’t quite right. For the next batch, we added a splash of almond milk and that made all the difference. It was so delicious! Engineer and I will definitely be making more . . . as soon as we get more bananas!
We’ve tried this too! It’s amazing that the consistency is so smooth and creamy
I like your idea to add the almond milk, we ended up adding a little honey and yoghurt to ours. Thanks for sharing at Happy lil ❤’s are baking!!
Ooooh, we’ll have to try honey next time! We now keep a stock of frozen bananas on-hand just for this recipe.