In the last few weeks of school this year, my son’s class had “Ice Cream Fridays”. Every single Friday the class had ice cream as a treat after their lunch. My son has never had traditional dairy ice cream in his life– and would definitely not be able to tolerate those little ice cream cups they have at school. I made this frozen banana ice cream for him on Friday mornings and sent it to school in a freezable container. I could vary the flavor mix ins for whatever we had around (fruit, nut butter or cocoa typically) and he couldn’t have been more excited to be able to participate in their Friday Fun Days.
Like many of my “recipes”, this is more of a method. For two servings, I start with 3 frozen bananas, broken into chunks. You can use a high speed blender or a food processor for this. Just blend. Blend until your mixture looks like soft serve– when you get it to the just lumpy stage, you can add your mix ins. Then keep blending. It will look like traditional soft serve when you’re all done.
Mix Ins:
Chocolate- I put in about 2 Tablespoons of cocoa powder and a teaspoon or so of maple syrup. If your bananas are really ripe, you don’t need much sweetener. I also often add nut butter to this blend– it cuts the banana taste quite a bit and tastes more like traditional chocolate that way.
Fruit Blends- We keep frozen fruit blends in the freezer for smoothies, and they work great for this too. Our favorite blend is mango, peach and carrot. That makes a really nice tropical ice cream that my son loves.
If you are completely against bananas, an alternate way to make this is with a can of full fat coconut milk or a can of coconut cream. You blend the coconut cream with any frozen fruit (blueberries work really well for this). Pour the mixture into a bowl (I used a small loaf pan) and freeze it. The result is smooth and creamy soft serve.
