Banana-fana Faux Ice Cream
At the end of the summer last year, the food blogging world was hit hard by an incredible new discovery: If you freeze a banana, then beat it up in a mixer or food processor for a while, it eventually turns into something with the flavor and consistency of ice cream. (Banana ice cream, of course.)
No, I know—I didn’t want to let myself believe it either. It’s obviously too good to be true. I mean, you know how those dairy-free gluten-free vegan hippie food bloggers can be. Just put a cup of barley and a spoonful of ipecac in a bowl of hot lime juice to make the perfect vegan cheeseburger! They mean well, but you can’t go around believing everything they tell you.
Skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead. So now it’s 2010, it’s getting to be summer again, and last Sunday I purchased my very first stand mixer. (Thanks, Craigslist!) I wanted to try it out on something easy… and deep down, I really wanted this banana thing to be true. So I figured I had nothing to lose except a few bananas.
I don’t want to totally spoil the ending here, but hot crackers, you guys, this stuff is bona fide. It’s banana fide! Sure, at first it’s all chunks of frozen fruit flying through the kitchen, and you have to dodge them and catch them and put them back in the bowl. But after a minute, they break down enough to stay put on their own. And then after another minute, they all come together as a kind of delicious paste. And then after another minute? Creamy-ass banana-flavored dairy-free gluten-free artificial-color-free no-high-fructose-corn-syrup ice cream, I kid you not.
Go try it. It’s amazing.
Throw a little cocoa powder into the mixer after it gets to the creamy stage and it becomes a perfect imitation of chocolate ice cream with a lovely banana finish. Add some frozen berries and it starts to become more like a sorbet. Put the whole thing back in the freezer for a while and it goes from creamy soft-serve to something icy and scoopable. Mix it with nuts! Bring in the hot fudge! Make a sundae out of it!
Oh, but probably not a banana split, I guess. That would be too much.
