I had every intention of posting about healthy peanut butter snack bites today, but it’s just so warm and sunny (I’m writing this from a shady spot in my garden) that ice cream just seemed much more appropriate!

This is healthy ice cream though, so I’m on the same theme at least.  Whilst trawling through Pintrest for summer recipe inspiration, this recipe, or at least variations of it, kept popping up.  Just like whipped coconut cream before it, banana ice cream is the current trend in wholesome eating.  I do enjoy being on trend…even though it happens almost never…so here’s my spin on it!

If you enjoy a banana based smoothie then you’re going to get on well with banana ice cream.  It is pretty cool how pureeing frozen banana chunks in a blender turns it in to sweet and creamy soft serve ice cream, to which you can add pretty much whatever takes your fancy.  I had strawberries and pistachios on hand, so that’s what was thrown in.  Pictachios lend crunch, and strawberries bright, fresh sweetness. One piece of advice about the strawberries though, cut them smaller than I did if you plan to freeze the ice cream further.  They freeze up much more solid than the banana making the ice cream difficult to scoop and eat.  A fine dice would be perfect.  If you want to serve the ice cream as it comes from the bender, in the soft serve form, just fold in any fruit/nut combination and size of your choice.

Other options could be toasted coconut and chocolate chips, peanut butter swirl, Nutella swirl (I need to make that variation now!) or you could add the strawberries to the blender and blitz them up with the banana.  Ideally you would make this with banana alone, but my food processor couldn’t quite cope with that, it’s only a mini one, so I added half a cup of fat free yogurt to loosen the mixture up but it is optional. (more…)