Food

Nice-cream Two Ways

As I have stated in previous posts, I love ice cream. Sadly, as many delicious things, ice cream is full of sugar and in many cases, trans fat. That’s why I gave up on ice cream long before I even considered giving up on sugar.

I don’t even remember how long I stayed without eating ice cream until last summer I found a three-ingredient chocolate ice-cream recipe that changed everything for me. It was as simple as freezing bananas and then processing them with honey and cocoa powder.

And then I got into the vegan food world. Since I’m all about clean-eating, and I always buy more fruit than I can eat, I started making nice-cream with whatever fruit I had at home at the moment. Whatever your choice is, the idea remains the same, process banana and whatever you want, and you will have a delicious nice-cream.

Let’s Talk Bananas!

Personally, I don’t like bananas. I like the flavor and things made of banana, such as bread, cake, pie, basically anything made of bananas, as long as it’s not the fruit itself. That said, I don’t like my nice-cream to have a prominent banana flavor, because in my opinion chocolate nice-cream should taste like chocolate, not bananas.

So what can you do about it? There are two options. If you don’t mind adding a sweetener or having a less sweet nice-cream, you can use green bananas. Not only they are great good for your health (you can read more about it here), they will also give you a creamy texture and a neutral taste.

If you don’t mind a bit of the banana taste, you can use ripe bananas, which will make your cold dessert nice and sweet. However, once they are frozen, you will not perceive the banana as much in your palate.

Now for the recipes!

A couple weeks ago, I got real ice-cream to celebrate my new job (yay!) and it contained chocolate peanut-butter chunks. Since it was made of milk and sugar, every spoon I had melted in my mouth, perfectly complemented by the chocolate swirls and chunks. Even as it came out of the freezer, it had the perfect consistency and temperature. Cold enough to be refreshing, but not enough to give you a brain freeze.

Of course, that got me thinking about my own recipes and how could I make something healthy that was just as rich and tasty that allowed me to eat a whole carton without worrying about closing my pants the next day.

So here are two simple recipes to make your Summer healthier and more fun. All you need is a food processor, a couple bananas, and few more ingredients. The only prep you need is peeling the bananas and placing them in the freezer. Super easy!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Nice-Cream

  • Servings: “2”
  • Difficulty: easy
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Yield: 1 cups

Ingredients

Chocolate chunks

  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
  • 1/4 cocoa powder

Nice-Cream

  • 2 frozen bananas
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter

Directions

  1. Mix the chocolate chunk ingredients in a bowl. Cover a plate with plastic wrap or pour it into a medium zip-lock bag and place it in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
  2. Process the bananas with the peanut butter until smooth and uniform. Place it in the freezer for about 5 minutes to firm up.
  3. Break the chocolate into chunks and mix it with the nice-cream.
  4. You can serve it with chocolate chunks and a drizzle of peanut butter.

 

Strawberry Nice-Cream

  • Servings: “4”
  • Difficulty: easy
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Yield: 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients

  • 2 frozen bananas
  • 1 cup of strawberries, fresh or frozen
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

  1. Process the strawberries and bananas until smooth. Place it in the freezer for about 5 minutes to harden.
  2. Serve it with slices of fresh strawberries and strawberry jam.

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