5 Fantastic Flavors of banana ice cream

Ice cream is my all-time favorite sweet treat, but probably not something I should indulge in everyday. Banana ice cream is a decent healthy alternative.  If you haven’t tried it yet, freeze up some bananas right away. This is tasty stuff.
 
When my client, Laura, gave me her recipe for mint chip banana ice cream that gets rave reviews from her kids it got me thinking about variety. They do say variety is the spice of life why not try it with this?
 
Searching my pantry for some fun flavors, resulted in list of 5 fantastic flavors. Convenience and speed is key with dessert…you never know when you’ll “need” something sweet. Each has as few ingredients as possible so you can whip them up faster than going to the ice cream shop.
 
First step takes the longest unless of course you keep frozen bananas ready to go at all times. Juice Plus Complete smoothies are a regular menu item here so our freezer is stocked.
 
I’m more of a get it done girl than a perfectionist when food is involved. So after peeling a ripe banana, I just break it in pieces and toss it onto a foil covered baking sheet. Freeze for an hour or two. Then store in gallon size freezer zip lock bags.

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Keep moving mama: The foil makes is simple to pick up the edges and dump them into a  large freezer bag. And if your grocery store sells bags of over ripe bananas at a lower cost per pound, buy a few and freeze a big bunch. Get it bunch…of bananas. My own biggest fan I know.
 
Once frozen, dump some bananas into your food processor along with optional other ingredients, then turn it on super high. Let it go till you see the mixture come together, similar to the texture of cookie dough. If you let your bananas thaw 5-10 minutes first it will go faster, and your texture will be more like soft serve.

We’re talking anywhere between 1 and 3 minutes, wait for it. Scrape the sides down, then process one more time to incorporate everything.
 
Now you have two choices

1. eat as is
2. freeze for an hour or two so you can scoop it.

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The fantastic five banana ice cream flavors are…drum roll…..:
 




Front row, left to right: Blueberry Banana, Peanut Butter Chocolate
Back row, left to right: Mint Chip, Chocolate, Vanilla Latte

Vanilla latte
After making a “rich brew” cup of coffee and letting it cool, I added ¼ c to the bananas. Next time I would freeze the coffee in ice cube trays…but you already know I’m not much for patience with food. Adding the vanilla took away the coffee bite and sweetened it up. Make your own vanilla extract with the recipe at the bottom of myhomemade lemon extract blog post.
 
Peanut butter chocolate
Adding some cocoa and pb2 made this flavor a fix for my chocolate/peanut butter craving. If you haven’t met pb2 you mustfollow this link and buy some now. It’s great in smoothies….and banana ice cream. Less calories and a good amount of protein make it a nice sub for peanut butter with even more peanutty flavor. A scoop of natural peanut butter would work too.

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Mint chip
This one is my nod to Laura's recipe. Isn’t mint and chocolate a perfect combo?
A handful of spinach makes it green, mint and vanilla extract give it a smooth taste. Then put the chocolate chips in when you scrape down the bowl so they are big enough for some crunch in your ice cream.
 
Keep moving mama: Process this a bit longer to make the green bits smaller if you worry about a kid freak out at the sight of green bits. I might experiment with processing the spinach before adding the bananas next time. Any ideas here?
 
Chocolate
Adding a scoop of Juice plus chocolate complete to the bananas made it even fluffier and hit the chocolate need, I mean craving dead on. It’s also less tart tasting than cocoa powder. Learn more about Juice Plus here.
 
Blueberry Banana
Fresh or frozen either way. I actually used the blue berry mash left from making a blue berry simple syrup last week. Throwing food away drives me crazy. This combo is a classic, and a beautiful color. Look how beautiful it was when I stopped to peak and scrape down the sides.

And now the official recipe:
 
5 Fantastic Flavors of
Banana Ice Cream
 
2 bananas
Add ins, list below

1. Vanilla latte- ¼ cup strong coffee, cooled (or frozen in ice cube trays) + 2 tsp vanilla
2. Peanut butter chocolate – 2 tblsp each cocoa and PB2
3. Mint chip – one handful of spinach + 1/8 tsp peppermint extract + 1 tsp vanilla extract + 2 tblsp chocolate chips (add these at the end to keep them chips larger)
4. Chocolate – 1 scoop of Juice Plus chocolate complete
5. Blueberry banana – ½ c blueberries

Instructions:

1. Freeze chunks of ripe peeled bananas on a baking sheet for at least one hour.
2. Dump banana chunks into food processor. About 2 cups on chunks = 2 bananas
3. Process on high until mixture comes together in a cookie batter or soft serve like texture. Scraping sides and processing one more time. 1-3 min.
4. Enjoy!

 
PRINT RECIPE

Give these a try or come up with something new. My "official" taste testers aka kids, loved the chocolate and mint chip the best...but cleaned all the bowls anyway. I would love to hear how these come out for you or which one you’ll try first.

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