Eat My Banana...

Ice cream.

I started working on a chocolate banana ice cream recipe not too long after this post from over a year ago. I am happy to say, after many attempts, some decent, some not so great, I finally hit on a ready-for-prime-time recipe.

Update! I made this again a few days ago and it came out terrible. When cooking the bananas they were very dry. It may have been that they weren't ripe enough (they were yellow but not brown). I didn't cook the bananas very long because they were so dry and that probably didn't help. If you make the recipe, please let me know how it turns out.

Update 2! OK. Made it yet again. This time I made sure the bananas were very ripe (half-brown) and it came out great! I will update again if the recipe ever fails with super ripe bananas.

Jay's Chocolate Banana Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

a little butter (for frying)
5 med. bananas (very ripe, half yellow/half brown is good)
1/2 cup sugar
8 oz. heavy cream
4.4 oz. (125 gr.) of bittersweet chocolate, chopped (10 squares of Trader Joe's PoundPlus bar)
1 tsp. vanilla
3 oz. mini chocolate chips (optional if you are crazy!)

Heat non-stick fry pan over medium heat with butter (maybe 1/2 - 1 Tbl.)
Peel and slice bananas into ~1/2 inch rounds. Fry until they start to caramelize, maybe 5 minutes (don't move them around until then!). Flip/stir them around and continue to fry for a few more minutes until they are very soft all the way through. Pan should have a lot of juice. Mash/break-up the bananas a little with the back of a spatula. If you don't want to blend later, mash them as much as possible.

Sprinkle in the sugar and mix until dissolved. Simmer 1 more minute. Add cream and stir in.

Reduce heat to low and add the chocolate. Stir constantly until almost melted. Turn off heat, take pan off burner and keep stirring until chocolate is completely melted. Mix in the vanilla.

Transfer to a bowl and, if you have one, use a hand blender to smooth the mix. Either cool, covered in refrigerator overnight or place in an ice bath (stir every few minutes). The mix should be cold before you churn it!

Churn it! Near the end of churning, add the mini-chips. Freeze and enjoy!

If this doesn't get you laid, there's no hope for you. ;-)