Machine -free & Dairy-free Ice Cream

 
The top ten reasons you are going to love this ice cream recipe:

1. An ice cream maker is not necessary to make it.
2. Your children (and husband!) will think it's delicious.
3. It is healthy enough to be eaten for breakfast - no joke!
4. It contains only three ingredients, and they are all-natural.
5. You can expand it to however many servings you'd like.
6. There is no dairy (okay, maybe only some of you care about this, but it's most important to me!).
7. It will take you all of about four minutes of hands-on time.
8. Nobody would ever guess that there are bananas in it - the flavor is completely masked.
9. It costs less than a quarter per serving.
10. There is no guilt when eating it!

I'm not even kidding when I say that this stuff is potentially life-changing.  Especially for those of us who can't tolerate milk - Non-dairy ice cream is ridiculously expensive and is chalked full of tons of ingredients I can't pronounce (read: not real foods).  Plus, it never tastes quite....right.  You know that gritty feeling that you can't pretend you don't notice when you're eating ice cream made of rice?  You won't find any of that in this recipe.  A friend had mentioned to me that it was possible to make ice cream from bananas.  Even though I was skeptical, I decided to try it, but added in the peanut butter and cocoa when making it.  Result? Pure bliss!

Gather your three ingredients:

Frozen Bananas.  Please, do not freeze them whole, as seen on the left.  They are a pain in the tuckus to peel, and my hands got so cold that I recruited the Hubby with a sharp knife to finish the job.  We learned our lesson: now we peel and chunk the bananas prior to freezing.

Peanut Butter and Dark Cocoa Powder.  Feel free to use regular cocoa powder, if that's what you taste buds prefer. 

And that's it!  Please use the following recipe as guidelines.  If you like more of the flavor of peanut butter, add some extra in there!  This is just what we've found we like.  The below portions are based on one serving (one banana); increase it to match your desired number of servings.

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients (per serving)

1 frozen banana

3/4 tsp. cocoa powder

1 /2 to 1 Tbsp. peanut butter

Directions

Peel bananas and chop into several chunks.  Freeze overnight or until solid in freezer-safe container.

When bananas are solid, dump half into blender.  Add in the desired amounts of cocoa and peanut butter, and top with the other half of the frozen bananas.  Secure lid and pulse mixture, stopping to scrape down sides occasionally.  When it starts to become creamy, begin to do longer spurts of blending until the consistency of soft-serve ice cream is reached.  

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During the initial blending when the ice cream is being pulsed, it will be chunky, like this:

Don't worry though - just keep pulsing and scraping down, and it will turn creamy and smooth!

It's so simple and so wonderful.  The ice cream is delicious in its "soft-serve" form, but the Hubby and I often make a larger batch and freeze it.  Then you can portion it out with an ice cream scoop.  (Bear in mind that if you do freeze your ice cream after making it, it have the slightly more "crystal" taste of regular ice cream, rather than the pure smoothness of soft-serve ice cream).

Aren't you ready to go freeze some bananas?  I thought so ;)  Let me know if you try it or if you have any other flavor combos you're planning on trying!

I'll be sharing this yummy goodness over at these fun blogs this week.   Thanks for stopping by!

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See this recipe featured at Polka Dots on Parade!  Thanks Jaime!
Whoa my gosh - and see it on Money Saving Mom's facebook page! 

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