If you have ever spent any time on Pinterest or any sort of food blog, I’m sure you’ve come across the phenomenon of banana soft serve.
The claim is that by using just a frozen banana, you can create delicious ice cream and, given the right flavors, you can even hide the fact that it is banana and not delicious dairy.
As an avid banana hater I was skeptical of this.
Me + Bananas =
But since I’m also lactose intolerant and attempting to be a healthy eater, an ice cream substitute was something I had to try.
Let’s get to the brass tacks.
There is a reason my title has quotation marks around it. I tried it. My roommate tried it. My suitemate tried it. And the resounding response was “…interesting.”
Not “OHMYGOD delicious!” or “ewww, disgusting” or even “hey, that’s good” but “…interesting.”
Firstly, it’s banana. Let’s make this very clear. No amount of chocolate, peanut butter, or raspberries will change the fact that it is banana. However, its consistency is very soft serve-like. And with no added sugars (if you use real vanilla extract), it’s surprisingly sweet.
As I mentioned, I hate bananas and my roommates aren’t huge fans of raspberries so I really can’t give you any opinion on whether you’d like it. It wasn’t bad, honestly.
If you love bananas and think banana flavored ice cream sounds good, then I’d say give this recipe a whirl. For everyone else, don’t listen to the Pinterest lies.
This is banana disguised as soft serve. It will never be anything but banana disguised as soft serve. Take my lead and don’t be afraid to try new recipes and new things, but also don’t be afraid of them failing. Because this, my dear readers, was a failure.
Without further ado: Banana “Ice Cream”
Cut up two bananas and put them in a bowl in the freezer. They should be approximately 1.5” slices but no need to be exact. The thinner you make them, the harder they get and therefore the longer you have to blend them. Alternatively, make them too long and they might not get frozen all the way through and then you’ll get less of an ice cream texture.
Let sit overnight (and by overnight I mean as long as you can. I was impatient and mine were frozen sufficiently after three hours).
If you like raspberries, freeze a batch of them too. I just threw the whole package in the freezer. This is a bad idea as they will leak if in the freezer more than 24 hours. I recommend putting them in the bowl with the bananas.
Toss bananas into blender with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and blend. And blend. Just keep blending. I used the ice crush setting for a few minutes before switching to ‘frappe’. You will think it will never look like ice cream.
Trust me in this part, it will.
You’ll start to doubt if it’s worth it but keep blending. Eventually (14ish minutes for me but I was only blending during commercial breaks) it will look like this.
Blend in raspberries (optional), two heaping spoons of cocoa, and if you aren’t the biggest fan of banana, a heaping spoon of peanut butter. But again, don’t be fooled, you’ll still taste the banana.
Blend until it is all incorporated.
Look how delicious this looks! Doesn’t it look like amazing chocolate ice cream? A healthy to indulge in, chocolatey heaven in a bowl?
ALL LIES.
But, hey, maybe you’ll like it.