one ingredient soft serve

You heard me right. One ingredient soft serve. No dairy, no additional sweetners. Too good to be true? Not in the least.

Friends, I have a non-banana bread use for those bananas in your freezer. And it's delicious.



One Ingredient Soft Serve

Frozen bananas
Food processor

Puree the frozen banana (peel removed, if that's not painfully obvious), until you have creamy soft serve. It's that easy. I promise.

I grew up working in custard stands, pumping my body full of egg + cream laden rich custard, frozen yogurt and sundaes. Ice cream / custard is something I take very seriously. So I was a wee bit skeptical of this one ingredient banana concoction sweeping the interwebs.

The verdict: A- (A+ reserved for fatty, rich things that will take weeks off my life .. so A- is pretty darned good)

It has only a faint banana taste, and really is remarkable how creamy it becomes, given that there are no additional ingredients added. It's healthy, refreshing, easy, and a great base for additional toppings ... like peanut butter / other nut butters, cookies, sprinkles, nuts, or just on its own.

My waistline thanks you, interwebs. Well done. :)

Operation cleanout - Day 2 - Strawberry Ice Cream

... in a blender.

I don't have an ice cream maker, though after trips to Albert's I often dream of one. His roommate, Jen, makes by far the most innovative flavors I've seen, from curry ice cream (oh, it was delicious. don't knock it until you try), pear and gorgonzola ice cream, to various sorbets and other dessert-ish flavors.

Operation pantry/fridge/freezer cleanout (shortened to "Operation cleanout") continues ... this time with dessert on Day 2. Moving is extremely stressful, and hell, my lack of a Y chromosome may be what leads to my inherent comfort by sweets. Or, maybe I just have an affinity for them at certain times. We'll leave that up in the air.

ANYWAYS. I'm determined to at least lessen slightly my pantry / fridge / freezer contents (there's a lot, and I'm not looking for miracles) and had 1 carton's worth of heavy cream sitting in the fridge. I can't drink liquid milk as is, so I have to get creative. The result of this challenge: homemade strawberry ice cream ... made, in a blender.

Homemade Fruit Ice Cream in a Blender

Ingredients:

10 oz. frozen (very frozen) berries ... I used strawberries
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream

Start by putting the fruit and sugar in the blender ... and pulse. And pulse some more ... This may take a while due to the frozen state of the fruit.



Once this starts to turn into a frozen slush, start to slowly add the cream, scraping down the sides. You may need to shake the blender a bit, depending on how much of the frozen fruit may get stuck in the blades. Once it starts doing it's thing, you'll know ... you can see from the outside the fruit go from slushie to a creamier texture.

You can freeze this up to a week, or serve immediately. Be careful, it melts quickly ... but oh so delicious.