Vegan, Sugar-Free Ice Cream

Did you know you can make ice cream out of nothing but bananas? It's pretty much the best thing ever. Personally, I put a few more things in just for flavor, but if you really like banana flavor you can just make banana ice cream, and here's how you do it:

One-Ingredient Ice Cream

1. Buy a bunch of bananas
2. Peel them and chop them into chunks
3. Freeze the banana chunks for at least an hour and up to two weeks
4. Run the frozen banana chunks through a blender

If you like soft-serve, stop here. Otherwise, or if you want to make it ahead of time, store it in a tupperware and re-freeze. If you freeze it longer than a few hours you may have to let it thaw a little bit before serving (a few minutes on the counter or 10 seconds in the microwave should do the trick).

I like to put cocoa powder (about a teaspoon per banana, adjust to your personal taste) and peanut butter (about a tablespoon per banana) in the blender with the bananas to make chocolate-peanut butter-banana ice cream. You could also put in just the cocoa powder to make chocolate ice cream, or strawberries, raspberries, or some other fruit to flavor the ice cream.

It turns out there's another super magical thing you can do with these frozen bananas, and that's make milkshakes. This is one of my absolute favorite recipes, and it makes a great breakfast in the summer. Healthy milkshake for breakfast? Yes, please!

Vegan, Sugar-Free, and Unbelievably Delicious

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Breakfast Milkshake

Ingredients

• 1-2 frozen bananas (I freeze pre-cut bananas by the bunch, so I usually just grab a little more than a handful and drop it in the blender; if your bananas look like most supermarket bananas, you'll only need one, but with the smaller non-GMO bananas you sometimes need more)
• 1 generous spoonful of peanut butter*
• 1 generous tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon superfood powder (optional)**
• 1/2 cup hemp milk or other non-dairy milk (or, if dairy is not a concern for you, dairy milk works fine--my boyfriend is allergic to dairy so we use Pacifica hemp milk)

Process

• Put all the ingredients in a blender, put on the lid, and blend it on up.
• Taste test and adjust flavor and thickness as desired. You may want more or less cocoa powder or peanut butter, or for a thinner milkshake add more liquid (in this case, hemp milk or whatever milk you're using).
• Pour into a tall glass and enjoy (share only if you want to)!

I always wash my blender before I'm even allowed to sip my milkshake. That way it gets washed and reassembled quickly and easily (otherwise, it never happens until I need to make another milkshake).

*It's only sugar free if you use sugar free peanut butter--Trader Joes, Organics, and Nut'n Better all make peanut butter where the ingredients list consists of literally nothing but peanuts and salt, and it doesn't get better than that. Those three brands all taste the same to me, but I'm not sure if the TJ's PB is organic or not. The other two are definitely organic.

**I use a superfood blend from the good folks at Enchanted Cedar in Lorena, TX. It contains Arriba Criollo Cacao Powder, Macca, Lacuma, Mesquite, Cinnamon, & Vanilla, and is 100% raw and organic. It's great blended into milk (dairy or non-), chaga tea, or coffee, and I also like to slip it into my milkshakes to bring the nutritional value up an extra notch.