Bananas - The One-Ingredient Ice Cream

My research for material sometimes involves me looking at recent food-related trends on the Internet. It is quite interesting to see what a random person has discovered that quickly catches on in the section of the blogosphere devoted to culinary misadventures. A very good example of this would be the one-ingredient ice cream recipe that The Kitchn came up with, which has since been re-posted by a good many people over the span of two years.

The idea seems simple enough - freeze some overripe bananas, peeled and sliced, for a number of hours so that they partially solidify. Toss them into a blender and blend, letting the heat and mechanical processing from the blades liquify the bananas into a lovely goo with the texture of soft-serve. Refreeze to get the consistency you would find in regular ice-cream.

Most of the blogs who have re-posted the recipe from The Kitchn don't seem to heed the re-freezing step, so I thought that this might be an interesting opportunity to recreate it as pictured in the original post. I also added some melted dark chocolate into the blend to provide a contrast against the bananas.

Due to some technical difficulties, the resulting ice-cream I made was more icy than what I was hoping for, but nevertheless, this is an undeniably fun way to enjoy (or get your children to enjoy) bananas. Given that bananas are pretty cheap at supermarkets I can see this being a dessert that students can prepare when they have guests around, and a healthy and cheap alternative to the Ben & Jerry's regularly offered at a discount at Sainsbury's. The only drawback is having to put down money for a good food processor or blender - mine in particular cost £30, but would provide returns for as long as it lasts.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Bananas	£1.15	8	+£0.22	Not much.