Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Oh the Possibilities!

I love ice cream. A lot. As a kid, I begged my parents to take us to Dairy Queen almost nightly. I clipped coupons for ice cream in hopes of convincing my parents they would get a good deal. I even put ice cream on my Christmas List, more than once. Its fine, I’m not ashamed.

Now that I’m all “grown up”, I’ve learned that my infatuation with ice cream is pretty much one sided. Ice cream does not love me nearly as much as I love it. It upsets my stomach and adds fat in places that I don’t really need help adding fat to. Don’t get me wrong, I still have not given up this obsession; I’m just learning to control it more. We very rarely buy ice cream at the grocery store because apparently it’s bad to eat a half gallon of ice cream in 1 or 2 sittings. And let’s face it, if I have a half gallon of ice cream at my house, I’m not going to stop with just one scoop. That would be insanity. No, if we are in the mood for ice cream, (and by “we”, I mean “me”, because my husband is never the one asking for ice cream), we go out to Sheridan’s or Coldstone or some other yummy place to get it.

Given my extreme sweet tooth when it comes to this frozen treat, you can imagine how much this article on one-ingredient ice cream caught my eye! I quickly found myself clicking on the link for answers. One ingredient? What could it be? I hope it’s something I have in my house all the time! I was extremely excited to find out that yes, this is something I have in my house almost all the time! And now I’m going to share it with you! (can you tell I’m excited by the number of exclamation points I’m using?)

One-Ingredient Ice Cream
Ingredient=1 Frozen Banana
Instructions: Blend in a food processor until it turns into the consistency of a soft serve ice cream. If put in the freezer afterwards, it will harden slightly to more of a true ice cream consistency.

What? A frozen banana? Yes! We have made this at least 3 times in the past few weeks and have learned a few tricks.
1. This works best if the banana is really frozen. We tried with bananas that had only been in the freezer a few hours and it did not turn out as well. Freeze the banana for at least 24 hours.

2. So I have to wait 24 hours for this if I’m in the mood for it? Not if you start keeping a constant supply of frozen bananas. We have a bowl in our freezer that we just keep adding bananas to when they start to brown. We’ve reduced waste and found a healthy way to beat those ice cream cravings.

3. Peel the banana before you freeze it. Frozen banana peels are nearly impossible to get off and you’ll probably get frostbite on your fingers trying. Your other option is to use a knife to just cut the whole peel off, but then you waste a little banana. You don’t want to waste even one bite of this delicious treat.

4. Keep blending. First the banana will just get chunky and chopped up. You may even have to take the lid off the food processor and move around the banana chunks a little to unclog them from the blades. But just keep the blades running and all of a sudden something magical happens and the consistency will completely transform! (Please note that we have not attempted this with a blender, only a food processor. I don’t know if the blender blades would cream the banana enough but let me know if you try!)

5. We use 3 ingredients. Okay, okay, so I know I told you it is 1 ingredient ice cream; and it’s perfectly tasty with that one stand-alone ingredient. However, if you want something truly delicious, add about a teaspoon of peanut butter and a few shakes of cinnamon to the food processer after you have blended the banana. Give the processer a few more times around to mix in the ingredients and voila! I promise you will not be disappointed.



We can’t wait for Lent to be over so we can experiment with adding chocolate syrup or chocolate chips to the “ice cream” too!

3 comments:

juliebrunner said...

oh. my. goodness. that looks like heaven in a martini glass.

Melissa said...

I thought you might like this! You should seriously try making it. Or you can come to Kansas City and I'll make it for you. Either way, it'll be delicious. :)

Unknown said...

I am so excited...I want to leave work to go put my bananas in the freezer right now! I have been craving ice cream for so long but am trying to be supportive and not buy it! I can't wait to give this a try.