Fruit Salad Ice Cream

The day before we left to visit our daughter in the Maritimes, we had 4 bananas that were ripe. I was so excited by that!

I removed the peel and put them in a freezer bag, in the freezer. In the good old days, they would have bought the farm, they would have gone where no bananas should ever go, they would have been sent to a landfill near us. But not this time, in the freezer they went. Insane right?

A few weeks ago, one of my blogger extraordinaire wrote a short post about making ice cream, all free of dairy, eggs and refined sugars. At the time, I thought she had lost it. But it got me curious, hey it takes one crazy person to listen to another (crazy person). So Every half an hour I kept refreshing my link to her blog to see if she revealed her secret.

One dark night, she did, she mainly used fruits which she first froze and then she blitzed the whole thing in her food processor.

My mind is just blown up with the possibilities, I like fruits, we have a freezer and a blender. I have to do this, I know I can, I know I can.

Yesterday I took my first step in homemade ice cream making. I took 2 frozen bananas, raspberries, mangos and cranberries and filled up the blender. I could barely close the lids, it was so packed. Now I'm sure Ivy sees the problem with that, I should have looked less at the picture she posted and read more about her directions. She proceeded by steps. First she put a limited amount of fruit, blitzed, then added more, blitzed, almond, blitzed. She made ONE portion at a time. I was trying to make enough for the whole village. What happened is that the bottom inch was being blitzed but most of the content was just becoming an ice field. As soon as I realized what was happening, as a member of the genius species, I used a wooden spoon to push the upper ice crust to the bottom. The wooden spoon ended up in the bottom and has been blitzed! Not a problem, it added a little extra fibre in the ice cream, right?

I took a plate and emptied the content in it and started the whole process one piece of fruit at a time.

My wife was looking at what I was doing and getting really anxious about tasting, so she suggested I poured some milk in the mixture. We are not allergic to diary so I added milk. She then told me I could have used orange juice... boy those back seat drivers, lots can be said about them, right? She was right, I could!  (Christiane here: the whole time he kept the lid off the blender, pushing with the wooden spoon while the blender was On.  I thought the concoction would end up in his face and on the ceiling, the cupboards, the counter, the floor!  At least he was wearing his glasses so he was kind of protected… At one point I had to leave the room as I was too nervous about it!  Well, it was leave the room or take a video of the whole thing and make money with it if it went wrong! LOL)

My wife being one of the two testers involved and knowing she has a weak spot for Nutella, I decided to added 2 tablespoons of it in the mix.

Once the magic formula was finished, I scooped the ice cream into 2 bowls, gave one to tester number one AKA my wife and kept one for myself. Tester number one waited for ME to do the initial tasting. Maybe she expected me to not survive the experiment but when I said it was good she tried just a tiny bit.

Conclusion: Success!

The texture was so smooth, it was perfect. I was expecting to taste the bananas but they seemed to have been blitzed out somehow (magic). My wife commented that the nutella was completely unnecessary, she couldn't taste it and it was adding un-welcomed calories.

Next time I make ice cream (and there will be next times), I'll purée the bananas before I freeze them. Maybe even use ice tray and freeze the puree in it to use later. I will make one portion at a time, and I'll keep my wooden spoon off the process.

Next week: How to make ice cream's cone from tree bark. one hint: DO NOT use cactus!