Adventures in cooking: One-ingredient ice cream

[eveglass]

I stumbled across this article a few weeks ago, that claimed you could make soft-serve-style ice cream with just one ingredient and no special equipment. That one ingredient is... frozen bananas.

Well, it turns out that I had some chopped-up frozen bananas in the freezer (to use in making oatmeal, which is a different experiment for a different day) and decided to try out this "one-ingredient ice cream." I think I had about one banana's worth left, which meant that I could use my teeny-tiny food processor. All told, it probably took about 30 seconds for the banana to look like ice cream. I had enough to fill about half a four-ounce ramekin, and put it back in the freezer to firm up a bit after being in contact with the warming metal blades. I think it took longer to clean up the food processor than to make the dish!

Anyway, it went back into the freezer for about an hour. Or, rather, I planned for it to be an hour. Actually, I lasted about 30 minutes before I decided to give in to my cravings.

In the end, it was about what you'd expected: intense banana flavor, quite sweet, and very creamy (about the consistency of soft-serve ice cream). If anything, it was too sweet, and I might consider adding in some extra ingredients next time, like peanut butter or something. Still, very tasty, and I can see this being a go-to snack in the summer. I bet it's way healthier for you than your standard freezer-pop or ice cream.

Comments

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

I know it defeats the one-ingredient thing, but that stuff is AMAZING. Stuff I've learned from making this that you might find helpful:

- Less ripe bananas (that are completely yellow but without brown spots on the peel), when used for this, produce a less intensely sweet ice cream
- A bit of added vanilla is lovely
- Peanut butter is also amazing if you like that mix

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely try that out next time. Thanks!