Sparkle Kitchen: Banana Soft Serve Ice Cream
In this week's By Thistle By Thimble story, “The Woman Who Moved a Mountain”, Jeanine Norton, mother, grandmother, and crossing-guard for the intersection of Main and School Street, has a secret that she has kept for 50 years—she is moving a mountain. Why? Well, you'll have to listen to the story to find out, but I will tell you two things: this is a love story and there is ice cream. Soft-serve ice cream, to be exact.
I wonder how many love stories have begun over an ice cream cone? I don't think there's anyway to reliably count, but I have a gut feeling that it's a lot. It's a story that writes itself. A warm summer night, a long walk home, laughter as a glob of ice cream starts to drip so much that it nearly slips off the side of the cone. It's almost as sweet as ice cream itself.
And this banana soft-serve ice cream is deliciously sweet.
Did you know that if you freeze and blend bananas they turn into a substance with exactly the same creamy texture as soft-serve ice cream? It's a neat trick, particularly if you consistently end up with one leftover banana about to go bad. You can just pop it in the freezer until you have a few saved up, and then you've got nearly instant ice cream.
For the recipe below, I've added a few tablespoons of milk or yogurt, as well. It's probably not necessary if you have a high powered blender, but if you're using a regular food processor it does help get things started. The kind of milk you use is not at all essential, though, so feel free to customize it to suit your dietary needs or what you have on hand.
If you have a mountain to move—or even just some light yard work—this makes a very refreshing reward afterwards for the folks you love.
Banana Soft-Serve Ice Cream
(serves about 4)
Ingredients
4-5 frozen bananas
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk, cream, coconut milk, yogurt, or etc.
Directions
Use a sharp knife to peel the bananas, and cut them into chunks.
Toss them in the bowl of a food processor or high powered blender and pulse several times.
Next add the vanilla and milk, and continue pulsing and mixing until the ice cream is smooth and creamy.
Serve immediately, either plain or with your favorite toppings.
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About the Author
Meryl Carver-Allmond
The Sparkle Kitchen Series is created by Meryl Carver-Allmond.
Meryl lives in a hundred-year-old house near the prairie with her sweet husband, two preschoolers, one puppy, one gecko, and about ten chickens. While she's been writing since she could pick up a pen, in recent years she's discovered the joy of photography, too. She feels lucky to be able to combine those skills, along with a third passion — showing people that cooking for themselves can be healthy and fun — in her Sparkle Kitchen posts.
