DIY: Banana Soft-Serve

It’s full-on fall now, but dropping temperatures do little to chill our appetite for ice cream – especially as those stressful end-of-semester deadlines loom.  But while a pint of Cherry Garcia may promise a much-needed sugar high, the sensory overload of that late-night snack may alter your mind – not to mention your waistline – for the worse.  (Unless your seminar paper is about, say, the science behind an addiction model for processed foods, in which case licking the insides of the carton to get at every last morsel of triglyceride, monosaccharide, and added emulsifer is, of course, research.)  If only there were a decadent dessert that could satisfy a study-break craving without the risk of food coma…

As you may have guessed, there is.  Frozen banana “ice cream” is a delicious dairy-free, refined-sugar-free treat that will satisfy virtuous vegan and lascivious lactophile alike. And the best part is you can make it at home, without a fancy ice cream maker or any other special kitchen equipment beyond a basic food processor.  All you have to do is chop and freeze a few bananas (two or three make a suitable serving):

Toss them in the food processor:

And blend until creamy, usually about five minutes:

You may need to stop and scrape the blade a few times so it keeps blending smoothly, and if your food processor is like mine (ancient, cheap, or for any other reason reluctant to actually process food), you may want to let the fruit thaw for a few minutes first.

The result is more like soft-serve than traditional ice cream: smooth, sweet, and impossibly creamy.

If this still sounds too much like health food to you – and let’s face it, part of the pleasure of ice cream is that it’s naughty – feel free to vamp it up.  A quarter cup or so of almond milk (or the regular old dairy variety) adds extra creaminess.  For a semi-healthy fudge sauce, mix two parts liquid sweetener (I like agave, but maple syrup would probably work too) with one part plain cocoa powder.  Add a sprinkling of chopped nuts, and you have yourself a deconstructed (or is it reconstructed?) banana split.  You could also intensify the flavor by adding a dash of cinnamon, scraping out half a vanilla bean, or tossing in a small handful of frozen strawberries or raspberries before blending.

So put those neglected, browning bananas on your counter out of their misery and into the freezer.  Then, instead of seeking solace for your writing woes in Chunky Monkey, make your own version: it won’t make you chunky, it’ll save you a chunk of cash, and it might just get you through that paper.