Banana Split Ice Cream

Banana ice cream is so easy to make, even with GAPS approved ingredients. Take it to the next level with chocolate and cherries to evoke a banana split flavor in a scoop! Nutrient dense meets banana split ice cream in this simple recipe everyone will love this summer.

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This summer has been one long bonanza of ice cream recipe experimentation. It has been a good summer, with half of it yet to come. We’ll see what new flavors emerge…

Now and then, we end up with bananas going a little too brown. Banana pancakes or banana bread are obvious solutions, and we keep some chunks of very ripe bananas in the freezer for smoothies. Or I make coconut chocolate banana muffins or almond flour chocolate banana muffins. Those get gobbled up quickly.

Given our current ice cream rut, and the fact that it has been hot enough that I don’t love using the oven, the last time I had some brown bananas, baking was not my first choice. We had a good stash of frozen smoothie bananas already…

What to do with overly brown bananas…

Two of my family members have a fondness for banana ice cream. Well, I hadn’t tried that yet, but how hard could it be?

I confess I have never seriously considered ordering banana ice cream in an ice cream shop. My eye and my brain skip lightly over the banana flavor and zero in on anything raspberry, cherry, peppermint, maybe something with chocolate pieces, almost any fruit, actually… except banana.

I took a shot at making banana ice cream. It was OK. There was still some left in the freezer 24 hours later, a sure sign that is wasn’t a hit. I used too much banana. For a mild flavor, bananas have a strange ability to overwhelm.

Enhancing the Banana Flavor

I tried again with only 2 bananas. This time, I included chocolate shavings to convince myself it was good, in case it wasn’t much better than the first attempt. As it turned out, I actually liked it! Maybe not as much as, say, raspberry chocolate chunk, but it was good. The banana lovers were happy.

Then we kicked it up another notch. If chocolate with creamy banana is good, then what if we had cherries in there, too? It would be like a banana split…

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It was better than a banana split. So much flavor! And you get banana, chocolate, and cherry in each and every bite. Unlike a banana split, where you get the cherry at the beginning and the banana at the end. Unless you save the cherry to the side and have it at the end. Like I do.

This one got two silent thumbs up while both thumb owners were digging into their banana split ice cream. I even like it! We will have this one again and again.

It would taste good even without the chocolate and cherries. It would taste good with other add-ins, like a real banana split. Strawberries, pineapple, peanuts, even a caramel swirl could be good. Maybe I will try those, or maybe I won’t. It really is pretty good the way it is!

Adapting for GAPS diet- or not

The base ice cream is easily GAPS-ifiable. You would need to use cultured dairy rather than fresh. If you are doing GAPS, you know all about cultured dairy, but if you want to learn more, it is actually pretty easy (and good for you!) to make milk kefir and cultured cream.

This ice cream tastes great with the cultured version, but of course the culturing takes advance preparation. Even though we aren’t exactly following the GAPS diet at the moment, I always keep kefir and cream culturing every day so they are on hand for recipes like this one. If you aren’t on GAPS, you could use fresh dairy or even the grocery store kefir and sour cream if you want.

But what about the chocolate and the cherries?

Things get trickier if you want the chocolate and cherries. Chocolate isn’t a great GAPS ingredient. My best suggestion would be to use a 100% chocolate bar (unsweetened!) in a minimal amount, and only if you are tolerating chocolate well.

The chocolate would taste awful to eat as is, but if you grate it so that the chocolate shavings are quite small, the chocolate flavor will combine wonderfully with the sweetness of the ice cream so it doesn’t taste bitter. I like Ghirardelli 100% chocolate.

If you aren’t on the GAPS diet, you can still do this recipe the GAPS way, or not. 100% chocolate is good, or you can substitute something else. 90% chocolate is also great, and not very sugary.

As far as the cherries go, fresh or frozen are good. For a splurge, I tried a somewhat cleaner version of maraschino cherries! Sadly, they are not GAPS friendly. Happily, fresh cherries are fine!

How to Make Banana Split Ice Cream

You can make this rather quickly, especially if the ingredients are already cold!

First, blend a cup of milk kefir (GAPS) or fresh milk with two bananas in a blender until smooth and creamy. Optionally, add a bunch of high quality, raw egg yolks. They add enormously to the nutrition, and keep the ice cream easier to scoop if it is in the freezer overnight. 6 or more would be ideal, if you can do that.

Add 1/4 cup honey (you might skip it if you want, as the bananas are very sweet, but it will help the ice cream not freeze quite as hard), a tablespoon of vanilla (also optional, but very good), and a mere dash of salt. Blend until nice and smooth.

Also add a cup of cultured cream (GAPS) or heavy cream. Whiz that all together until blended, but not long enough to turn the cream into butter. (Yes, I made that mistake once!)

Process this mixture in your ice cream machine as usual.

While the ice cream maker is doing its job, grate your chocolate and chop your cherries. The grated chocolate incorporates more pleasingly into ice cream than chocolate chips do. You will be able to taste chocolate shavings much better than chunks or chips, since they will melt faster on your tongue. Not to mention that you won’t be likely to chip a tooth on them!

I used a somewhat healthier version of maraschino cherries. They don’t have dyes or as many unrecognizable ingredients as regular maraschino cherries do, but they do have sugar in them. If you are on the GAPS diet or otherwise trying to steer clear of sugar, using fresh or frozen cherries would be great.

At the end, add in your chocolate shaving and chopped cherries, mix, and put in a covered container in the freezer. If you serve it within a few hours, it will scoop easily.

If you serve it later, you will need to soften it at room temperature (or in the refrigerator for a longer time) before scooping. (If you used egg yolks, you will not need to soften, or at least it will soften very quickly!)

Make Banana Split Ice Cream Your Way

This is a very flexible recipe! Beyond the different types of dairy you could choose based on your dietary needs and goals, you could substitute the honey (GAPS friendly) for other forms of sweetener. In fact, the bananas make this recipe so sweet that you might choose to leave the honey out entirely! One advantage to honey is that it prevents the ice cream from freezing quite as hard, as do egg yolks.

You could simply make a banana ice cream and leave it at that. Alternatively, you could add other banana split favorites, or substitute them for the chocolate or the cherries as you prefer. For example:

• bits of strawberries
• pineapple tidbits
• a swirl of chocolate or caramel sauce
• chopped peanuts
• marshmallows
• whatever you think sounds good in a banana ice cream!

What toppings do you like best on a banana split?

Want more ice cream? Try vanilla, chocolate, or suggested variations on chocolate ice cream!