Dairy Free Chocolate Soft-Serve Ice Cream

Soft-serve chocolate ice cream that's secretly healthy? I can dig it--- I'm always on the hunt for a guilt-free treat. Plus, no one (yourself included) will ever believe that the base of this decadently smooth soft serve is made with frozen bananas.

I started using Pinterest two years ago, almost exactly. Over the past year of my time on pinterest I've seen variations of this ice cream recipe floating around. For the longest time I pushed the idea of blending frozen bananas into ice cream aside, because... well, it sounded too good to be true.

But a few weeks ago I finally took the plunge and I made this "miracle" ice cream. Honestly, I was shocked. It was incredible! It far surpassed my expectations and David and I immediately deemed it "worthy to share".

After a few weeks, this is my own personal take on such a popular recipe. I love it. Obviously it's dairy free, that is until you go adding whipped cream to it.

You should try this, you should try this today. On a related note, I've only ever made this in a high quality Cuisinart food processor. I imagine you will get the same results from other high-end food processor brands, such as Kitchen Aid or Magimix. You could also probably use a good quality blender like a Vitamix or a Blendtec. However I could not see myself having a successful ice cream making experience with my low-end blender since only one button works and the blades/motor are not very powerful (I won't mention the brand, but it's a crappy blender). If you don't use a great blender or food processor to make this, you will probably burn out the motor on your appliance. I give you fair warning.

Banana Chocolate Soft-Serve

3 very ripe medium bananas *the riper, the sweeter, but not black! Just starting to spot and soft.

1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened natural cocoa powder

2 packets stevia in the raw

1/8-1/4 cup ice cold water

The day before or the morning of when you want your ice cream slice the bananas into 1" rounds and place in an even layer on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Freeze for 4 hours. This is called flash-freezing. You're essentially giving the bananas a chance to freeze in separate pieces first so that when you transfer them into a gallon-size zip-loc they don't freeze in a giant clump.

After the first 4 hours of freezing transfer banana pieces to a zip-top bag and freeze for at least 4 more hours.

Pulse frozen bananas, cocoa powder, and stevia in high-quality food processor or blender until the bananas are chopped to the size of pieces of rice. Start running the blender or food processor like normal. and slowly add the water in while it's running until the ice cream reaches desired consistency. Serve immediately. 

Recipe Yield: 2 servings

Recipe Source: adapted from several online sources

My Recipe Notes: 

I usually add the full 1/4 cup  of water, but how much you add will ultimately come down to the size of your bananas and how soft you want your ice cream. You might have to scrape the bowl of your food processor or blender down a few times during this process to make sure that all of the banana chunks get blended up.

This isn't really the kind of ice cream you can freeze and have it be just as tasty. So if you do have leftovers and want to freeze them just chunk up the leftovers and run them through the food processor again (like in the above directions, but without adding more cocoa powder or stevia). But really, eat it right away. It's so good you'll want to anyway.