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Saturday, June 6, 2015

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!



18 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh. You guys are so funny, this made my morning. I read the entire post Tim and we enjoyed it a great deal.

    Blenders are good tools but often require the use of a liquid to fully incorporate all that you stuffed in there. Where a food processor (even a small 500 watt), has the power to whip air about, giving that ice cream feel.

    But that doesn't matter so much as the fun. Yeah, it's super amazing how the nanner just vanishes, which is wonderful.

    One quick note about nanners: Try different stages. A fully ripen will add more sugar and change the texture. Where a ready-to-eat will add less sugar but a smooth texture. I use both, though, myself.

    And lastly, you can freeze everything open on a bake tray. Once frozen, those bits will sit nicely in a container or bag. And they won't stick as much.

    And if there's every ANY formulas of mine you want, just email or as in the blog. I'm lousy at writing things out, but more than welcome to share.

    Again, this was a great post. So funny. So, so funny.

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    1. Thanks Ivy, I was afraid you would send the copyright police on me since I took one of your fantastic idea LOL

      You do know I'm a man, I don't listen to direction but just tell me I need an extra tool and I'll be running down to the hardware store faster than a speeding senior going to the bingo hall... If I get a food processor, I'll get a 5000 watts (I have a whole village waiting for ice cream) ha ha ha

      Thanks for the offer of sharing your formula, but I don't think I'll even re-used mine. I'll just going to take what ever is available and blitz into deliciousness.

      I bought pineapple, I still have my coconut milk plus a few more frozen nanners... experiment making ingredients at its best :) and who knows instead of the wooden spoon, I might just use almond for fibers!

      I think I'll experiment with quinoa seeds in ice cream (but please keep that between you and I as I don't want my wife to find out)

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    2. Oh yeah, you totally did it the Man Way. Which is brilliant and fun. Even down to the spoon.

      I LOVE almonds in mine. Pecans, anything really. There are no rules.

      I am in the market for a new processor because to me, 500 is okay but if buying new I wouldn't get less than 1000 watts. That's what I had back in the day and it made great homemade peanut butter.

      The one I'm looking at now is 1200 watts of whipping power.

      What works nice about the food processors is I can dump ALLLLL my frozen fruit in at once. I do knock it back down though and at the end taste, and add maple as needed. Honey works too but does tend to make the whip fruit a tad more dense. Still good though.

      Anyway, this was fun. No, never copyright police. Anyone can have any of my things. And once I get my real food blog going (next on my list haha), I'll have properly written out recipes.

      Or videos. We'll see.

      Got more cherries from the market today. Gonna wash, de-pit and FREEZE.

      YUM!

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    3. I'm also playing around with frozen vedge and sneaking that in my ice creams as well. Shhhh ... don't tell Hubby.

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    4. Maybe we could buy the processor together and shared custody... you have it for the winter and I keep it during the summer... what do you say?

      That will be great when you get your food blog, count me in the followers :)

      Your secret is safe with me, I will never tell a soul about the veggies "accidentally" falling in the ice cream.

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  2. It looks delicious, I'm jealous!

    -WWE

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    1. Come on down, I'll do a batch just for you. Anything particular you would like? But before you answer... NO it can't be only chocolate!

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    2. How about coconut almond fudge chip?

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    3. Ivy you are bad! ha ha ha

      Please Martha don't encourage Ivy she is a trouble maker LOL

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  3. OHMYGOSH....this was so much fun! Can you hear me laughing from all the way over here? BAHAHAHAHA How about now? I can just picture you working next to Wonder Woman in a cooking reality show. I never watch reality TV shows but I'd watch one with you two in it. The craziness that you two have is contagious. I've caught the bug. My next trip to the market - hopefully before the weekend ends - will include the purchase of all kinds of goodies for fruity ice cream experiments. Forget the "don't try this at home, kids" warnings. I'm ignoring them. I must MUST try this at home. My weakness is berries, so I'm going to have to try those out first.

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    1. Berries for me too, Martha. Something so great about them.

      Very funny on the cooking show. That would be a hoot. We can call it Man VS. Cook. So funny, it would be.

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    2. Martha I want to try this with blueberry so bad, it should be awesome, maybe a mix blueberry and raspberry and of course a couple of nanners. If you do it and you need to borrow a slightly damage wooden spoon, just drop by. The TV shows is not a good idea, the voices are telling me that I'm not crazy... plus I think her red boot might be too much a distraction for me!

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    3. Richard, I did blueberry and posted it. Soooooo good.

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  4. I just use frozen banana and raspberries. No wooden spoons incorporated!

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    1. You don't know what you are missing Natalie... I prefer maple wooden spoon!

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