Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Fabulous One(or two) Ingredient Ice Cream

I'm updating and reposting this blog from two years ago. It is summertime and everyone is busy making homemade ice cream and it's so good and so hard to resist.

Here's a healthy alternative that is quick, easy and so much healthier for us.

Banana or Banana Strawberry Ice Cream

*Original blog here....


If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and done it myself in my kitchen, I probably wouldn't have believed it. I had heard about one ingredient ice cream made with nothing more than a few frozen bananas, but I confess I had my doubts, so I decided to put it to the test....


I also had another ingredient I wanted to add....






Which technically made it two ingredient ice cream, but who's counting, huh?


I'm like...WOW!  This is just one of the most awesome things I've ever seen...honestly, I was awestruck. Then I'm like....where is everybody when you have something special to show them?

So since nobody's actually here to see it, I have to show all of you. Listen, you owe it to yourself to give this a try. If you're on a sugar free/dairy free diet or just trying to eat healthier, this is a MUST TRY!

Can you tell I like it?

Let me give you a little history...I am on the Whole30 way of eating right now, I don't think of it as a diet, but a way of changing my eating habits. I don't have time to go into all of it now, but I can have no dairy, no sugars, no grains, no additives of any kind, and no a bunch of other stuff.

So...when my husband bought two cartons of Blue Bell yesterday, I could have thrown them at him, especially the Southern Blackberry Cobbler..could be because it's my favorite ice cream. If you don't know what Blue Bell is, then that's ok...I understand you're not from the South. If you're from the South, especially the Texas area, you most certainly know that Blue Bell is likely the best ice cream EVER!



UPDATE: Blue Bell is unavailable across the country these days and we've almost been in mourning here in Texas....seriously.


Anyhoo....back to the bananas since the Blue Bell is a no-no.

I found some basic instructions on how to do the banana thing and here's what I came up with.





Cut 4 bananas into round slices, lay them on a plate to freeze(I used a pie plate).

If you've never frozen bananas before, you ALWAYS peel them first. Never freeze a banana with the peel on...they are unpeelable (is that a word?) I just threw one in the freezer one day and when I went to use it, I discovered that the peel freezes to the banana..well, duh! I had to peel it with a knife. I'm sure most of you already knew that, but hey, I didn't so maybe there's somebody else out there as blonde as I am.




Cut about 1 cup strawberries in pieces, lay them on a plate to freeze.



Freeze for about 2 hours


*UPDATE: this really works much better if you only freeze the fruit for a couple of hours, but it's not a law set in stone. However, the longer you freeze the fruit, the longer it takes, those bananas are rock hard after a while. If you keep some in the freezer(like I do now)just set them out to thaw just a bit before processing.


Place frozen banana slices in food processor and blend, scraping the sides if necessary.

I was in such a hurry, I forgot to take a picture of the bananas in the food processor before I turned it on.


This was a thing of beauty, the most perfect consistency you could dream of. It was just like a very firm soft serve ice cream and the taste was very good. I wasn't sure how I would like just the banana taste but it was really good.

If you want to stop at this point, you won't be sorry...the banana alone was a wonder. Anyhow, since I had frozen the strawberries, I decided to see how they would do.

Add the cup of frozen strawberries and blend well.




You will have to stir these a bit and even when you're finished, there may be a few small bits of frozen berries, I thought it just made it better.


I didn't want to blend any longer than necessary, because I knew the mixture would become thinner the longer I went. The strawberries did thin it down a bit, but not enough to worry. I've eaten some pretty thin homemade ice cream in my day...never stopped me.



A lovely blend of frozen strawberries and bananas...what a wonderful, healthy summertime treat!



It's all in my bowl! He has Blue Bell!

I actually added a couple drops of Lemon Essential Oil to the finished product and it was very tasty.



You could add nuts, coconut, chia seed etc to the finished product too.

I'm thinking other frozen fruits would be good too as long as they don't have a lot of liquid, maybe some frozen peaches?

How about putting it back in a Dixie cup with a Popsicle stick?


I'd like to hear some of your ideas too.

Also, if you don't have a food processor, I think a good blender would do this just as well.

patti

2 comments:

  1. I don't have a food processor. I wonder if a blender would work. I had a black and decker food processor I received as a wedding gift. I never used it so i sold it at a garage sale. That was before I changed the way we eat and went away from store bought processed food. A food processor is on the ever growing wish list.

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  2. I think a good blender would work, Peggy. You might start small and just try two bananas to see how it works. If you decide to get another food processor, I love my KitchenAid, they're not that expensive for the quality you get.

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