I chanced upon a video the other day claiming that blending up a bunch of frozen bananas makes for a great ice cream substitute. I'm not sure what to call it, because banana ice cream implies 'banana-flavoured' ice cream. It's not really "healthy" ice cream either because it technically isn't ice cream at all? Hence, the best I could come up with was mock ice cream, which sounds kind of dumb actually, ha ha.

Anyway, the point is, I was home today with nothing better to do. Thus I decided to go ahead and give it a try, retreating to this space thereafter to share my thoughts on this potentially awesome idea. My verdict is that the real deal still beats this mock ice cream. THAT SAID, a few things may have gone wrong on my end which led to a less-than-tasty outcome.

Firstly, I left my bananas in the freezer for about a week. I had put them in with plans to try this sooner, but I got busy with work and life. Go figure. Soooooo, maybe if I had used fresher bananas, the taste would have been nicer? Also, I used a specific brand of banana that my mum says to avoid. I'm not sure what her logic is (probably something auntie), but maybe that could have affected the taste as well?

Additionally, my blender at home isn't that great so I had to add a bit of skim milk to assist the blending. This resulted in the final concoction tasting more like a frozen smoothie. It got kind of icy the longer I left it in the freezer as well. An advise someone gave me on Instagram was to use a food processor instead of a blender as it helps retain the moisture of the banana better, preventing the somewhat icy concoction I had at the end of the day.

To summarise, perhaps if you used fresher, better quality bananas and pulse them in a food processor without adding ANY milk, you might end up with something tastier. It didn't taste TERRIBLE, but give me a tub of Ben & Jerry's any day.

Labels: food, tutorials

written at 00:47