It’s finally time for a new recipe!  I keep seeing this recipe for what they call ‘Nice Cream’, a healthy ice cream, and really wanted to try it.  Basically you’ll be able to squash that craving for ice cream, while having something super healthy and nutritious – what’s not to love?!  You can opt to make it dairy-free like I did, or you can use milk.

The original recipe is on my Pinterest Healthy Food board HERE, where they give you 4 variants of the same basic recipe.  It was from Goodful, the people who always have delicious recipe videos roaming around on your Facebook news feed.  I went for the Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream, the flavour right at the end of the video, because wowzers does it sound delicious!

Let’s get to it!

INGREDIENTS 

3 bananas, sliced and frozen solid

1/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)

2 tbsp peanut butter

1 tbsp cocoa (I added a second tbsp as you couldn’t taste the cocoa properly)

(I added a squeeze of honey)

INSTRUCTIONS

Place all ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth.

(I found I needed to add a little extra almond milk as the mixture was very thick, not like in the Goodful video, and this helped immensely. I also added extra cocoa powder and some honey for sweetness.)

Pour into container and freeze for one hour.

(One hour was perfect freezing time – the ice cream wasn’t rock hard, but it was still set and was easily scooped up.)

Serve and eat!

I think that the only issue I had was with the cocoa – 1 tbsp wasn’t enough, but 2 tbsp was just too much, and it ended up with quite a bitter aftertaste.  Next time I’d rather err on the side of caution and stick with the 1 tbsp, or just add in chopped up dark chocolate.

So as you can see, it’s a very basic recipe.  And do you know what I love about a basic recipe?  The fact that you can mix and match and change up the flavours!  These are my ideas for other flavours of this delicious healthy ice cream:

• Pina Colada – 3 frozen bananas, 1 cup frozen pineapple and 1/4 cup coconut cream or milk instead of regular milk.
• Raspberry – 3 frozen bananas, 1 cup frozen raspberries and 1/4 cup milk of your choice.
• Strawberry Lime – 3 frozen bananas, 1 cup frozen strawberries, grated zest of one lime and 1/4 cup milk of your choice.
• Choccacino – 3 frozen bananas, 1 tbsp cocoa, 1 tbsp coffee powder (dissolved in 1 tbsp warm milk), 1 tbsp honey and 1/4 cup milk of your choice.
• Coconut – 3 frozen bananas, handful of desiccated coconut and 1/3 cup coconut cream/milk.
• Chai – 3 frozen bananas, chai spice, 1/4 cup milk of your choice.
• Mango – 3 frozen bananas, 1 cup frozen mango and 1/4 cup milk of your choice.
• Rose – 3 frozen bananas, 1 tsp food-grade rose water and 1/4 cup milk of your choice.

Other thoughts:

Other than flavours, you can go crazy with toppings or sauces – just imagine swirling some crushed pistachios through the rose variant, or some almond butter through the choccacino one?  Crushed nuts, nut butters, sauces or even whole chunks of fruit could be mixed through before freezing.

You could even serve up a scoop of this at breakfast time, drizzled with homemade granola!  Who said you can’t have ice cream for breakfast?!

Have you ever tried making a healthy ice cream?