One Ingredient Banana Ice Cream

I have been meaning to try out this banana ice cream recipe ever since first seeing it when I was doing the sugar free thing *cough* back in June 2012. I made a Five Minute Carrot Mug Cake, which was actually delicious – and who needs an excuse to eat cake for breakfast? The original recipe was served with a banana ice cream made with nothing more than frozen, ripe bananas. Well, you just try and keep bananas long enough in this house for them to be ripe then frozen… it doesn’t happen very often. Finally I found myself not only with some ripe bananas to spare but also a toddler who was refusing to eat anything but bread and butter for breakfast. So I thought I’d try a new alternative with some breakfast ‘ice cream’. Genius, right?

This ‘recipe’ is by no means original, there are hundreds of similar ‘recipes’ on the interwebs, with slightly different methods. Here’s how I made my version.

One Ingredient Banana Ice Cream

You will need:

3 ripe bananas

My method:

Peel the bananas and slice thinly, then place onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and cover in glad wrap. Place in the freezer for one hour.*

Place the frozen banana into your food processor and blend until smooth and creamy, but not runny. All I have is a stick blender with a small bowl attachment, so that’s what I used and it worked perfectly.

*If you don’t mind waiting longer for your ice cream you can cut thicker chunks and just chuck them into a freezer bag and into the freezer for several hours or even overnight. If your banana is frozen solid you may need to let it defrost a little before making the ice cream. I don’t want to be responsible for any broken kitchen machinery!

Serve your ice cream straight away, or do what we did and make mini banana ice creams. I used the ice block kit that I bought from Ikea years ago and am so pleased to finally be using. I’m not sure if they still sell them in Australia, but they are online in the USA. You can buy similar sets cheaply from most department or kitchen supply stores. I just spooned the ice cream into the ice block moulds and popped them in the freezer overnight. Hello breakfast!

Pebble thought the idea of ice cream for breakfast was giggleicious. She literally could not. stop. giggling. I had to make it very clear that we are only allowed these special ice creams at breakfast time, and not her regular scoop of vanilla. She stoped giggling long enough to nod seriously but I could tell she was all “I’ll do whatever you say lady, just gimme, gimme, gimme”. As it turned out she was done after a few licks, which is pretty typical ‘Pebble’ behaviour with a first time food. Oh well, I was quite happy to eat it for her :)

I have already bought a huge stash of bananas ready to make this ‘ice cream’ again – it was that good. I’d prefer to eat it freshly made, rather than popsicle style, but the popsicles work great for making ahead.

If you try this out please let me know how you go, I’d love to know.