Super Healthy Banana Ice Cream

There seems to be a bit of a frozen dessert theme happening in my home at the moment...maybe because we are in the middle of summer.
I'm always aware that ice cream has a lot of dairy and sugar in it, so when I saw this recipe I was interested...dubious but interested. It contains no sugar and is predominantly banana.

I'm always a bit reluctant to buy too many bananas...we either go through a banana grazing phase wher they disappear so fast I can't believe it or sit untouched and get less and less appetising.
 I had a few bananas that were getting a bit old so decided to give it a go. Usually older bananas get made into banana cake or banana and blueberry muffins in my house but this recipe was so good and easy it might be a tough decision next time.

I chopped the bananas into 3-4 cm slices and froze in a snap lock bag (overnight is good...but possibly a shorter time would be ok too.
I used crunchy peanut butter and it was fine. I'm sure this could be left out of the recipe if you didn't want to use nuts.


Banana Ice Cream

4 bananas, just slightly overripe (brown spots good, completely black not so good)
2 tbsps creamy peanut butter
2 tsps cocoa powder (Dutch process),

DO NOT FREEZE THE WHOLE BANANA, you’ll have a heck of a time blending that beast.

Peel the bananas and slice them up into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick disks. Place the banana slices in the freezer for about an hour or until they are frozen solid. 

Put the frozen slices in a food processor and pulse. First they will start to resemble gravel, but keep going. The bananas will soon turn into a frozen mush – at this point, start scraping the sides down (you will do this a lot). Or you could add a dash of milk since the liquid will help the blending. After a few minutes of stopping to scrape the sides down, the banana begins to blend into a creamy texture. 

When the bananas look like whipped ice cream, you can add your mix-ins like peanut butter and/or cocoa powder, chocolate chips, toffee, raspberries, anything goes! Straight out of the food processor, the ice cream is like soft serve. You can also freeze it for a firmer texture. It’s pretty hard (and therefore, brittle) when I scoop it immediately after removing it from the freezer. Just give it a minute or two to soften up.