You know, I can take or leave most sweeties. Cakes & cookies. Pies & palmiers. Trifles & tortes. Biscuits & brownies. I like them, but could easily live without them. I do have a sweet tooth but it its usually reserved for my one special love: ice cream.

Which has always been a real shame for me, because most ice creams and frozen yogurts on the market are pumped full of either refined sugar (a toxin) or worse, aspartame (a neurotoxin). I also find that frozen dairy (UPDATE 2018: I’m vegan now) never sits that well in my tummy and as I’ve been experimenting with raw vegan recipes lately, I’ve noticed a trend amongst the food blogging community for throwing frozen fruit into the blender and serving it as soft serve ice cream. I’ve totally followed the crowd on this one. But why not? Its so much tastier and healthier…and MUCH easier to make than the process of churning homemade ice cream I remember from my childhood, which involved pre-freezing the metal canister, making a custard, then waiting AGES for the ice cream to finish churning around.

This recipe is vegan, free of refined sugars and naturally fat free. It is also “raw” if you use the cacao powder option and leave out the maple syrup, but I’m not too bothered about that.

I’ll admit…its not a great photo, but quite frankly, I was far less interested in food styling my dessert than I was in eating it!

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 3 over-ripe medium organic bananas
• 1.5 to 3 Tbs dark, unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably organic) or cacao powder…whichever is fine
• 2 Tbs organic maple syrup

Step One

Peel 3 medium sized over-ripe bananas and freeze them overnight.

Step Two

Once the bananas are frozen hard, take them out of the freezer and give them a rough chop, toss them into your high speed blender or food processor* along with the maple syrup and cocoa powder. If you want a milk chocolate appearance – like old fashioned soft serve – use 1.5 Tbs of cocoa powder. If you want a rich uber-dark chocolate appearance like an Italian gelato, use 3 Tbs of cocoa powder.

Step Three

Whiz everything around in a high speed blender* for about 2-3 minutes. It will be loud and crashy-bashy sounding, but at the end, you’ll end up with smooth, rich ice cream which you can either eat right away or put into a tupperware and freeze for a hard ice cream later on.

If you want to make it look like a soft serve ice cream for children, just pop it in a piping bag with a wide star tip piping nozzle and immediately pipe into the cone or dish.

Its so easy. Its so sweet. And its so healthy. Just give it a go…

 

 

 

 

 

*This post contains affiliate links to Nutri Ninja, the brand of blender and food processor I’ve been using for a few years now, so if you shop using my link you won’t pay anymore, you’ll get free next day delivery and you’ll be helping to support my blog.