One Ingredient Ice Cream--Really!

This is one of those revolutionary recipes which changed the way we prepare food and eat it--right up there with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I found it a couple weeks ago while perusing a helpful food blog: Handle the Heat, but by the looks of the comments on this recipe, it seems that dessert secret has been out for awhile.


The Mystery Ingredient: Bananas

So, everyone who does not have an aversion or an allergy to bananas should be totally excited about this recipe. All you need is bananas, a freezer (of course) and a food processor. The bananas should be ripe, but not too ripe. This is not the recipe for your I-wouldn't-eat-these-but-maybe-I-can-make-something-with-them bananas.

Simply cut peeled bananas into bite-sized pieces and freeze them on a flat pan/cookie sheet. Depending on your freezer this will take a couple/few hours. Once you have frozen banana pieces you are ready to make ice cream, and this will take under five minutes.

Simply pulse the frozen banana pieces in a food processor. (Take care not to overload your processor. Depending on the amount I am processing, I do a couple batches.) If your bananas are very frozen they will ricochet off the side of your processor for several pulses before they begin to transform into smooth, creamy ice cream. I move from pulsing to continuous processing toward the end, and use a spatula to work the remaining banana pieces into the ice cream--when the processor is turned off.

The texture of this ice cream really is smooth and creamy, just like ice cream, but without the cream and sugar. As you can see by the picture, we are enjoying our banana ice cream (almost daily) with a few add-ons: homemade chocolate syrup (yes, there is sugar in this) and chopped salted peanuts.

Tayta's Chocolate Syrup (not as sweet as Hershey's)

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine cocoa, sugar, water, and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Let boil for one minute, remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Let cool and store in the refrigerator.