Ice Cream... semi-fail

I gave myself a fun little experiment last night. Over the break, my mom "surprised" me with the task of cleaning out our entire basement! It wasn't quite so fun... BUT in the cleaning and organizing I found an amazing little appliance! I found a mini ice cream maker!!

I absolutely LOVE this find! I have no idea when we got this, but in my 22 years of being alive, this is the first time I've seen it. I actually tried to google it and its so old, you can only find them on ebay.

I am obsessed with anything in miniature, so I was so excited to try it out! Because of the small size of the chiller, any ice cream recipe would be too much for it to handle, so I had to wing it! The machine can only hold a maximum of 1.5 cups (or so says the instruction manual). But I think its only able to hold 1 cup.

Size comparison - that is a teaspoon!

So, I got out some random ingredients, and developed a chocolate ice cream recipe! The ice cream batter tasted good, but my ice cream chiller was ALOT different than I had expected. I used an electric ice cream maker before and that has a crank that continuous turns as the mixture freezes. I thought that the concept would be the same for my mini hand-crank ice cream maker, but that was not the case!

After continuous stirring the mixture for about 30 minutes with no change in texture, I kind of gave up and just put it in the freezer until the morning. When I finally got around to reading the directions, continuously turning is not what you are supposed to do!

Apparently, you should turn the mixture once or twice every 3 - 4 minutes for proper freezing to happen. And since I was semi-impatient, I may have not refrigerated my ice cream mixture long enough. Nonetheless, the chocolate ice cream turned out pretty well! I'd like to try it again sometime, with the proper technique, but here's my recipe for now!

Print this recipe!


Chocolate Ice Cream

Note: the recipe can be doubled/tripled based on the capacity of your ice cream maker! 

Ingredients

• 1/8 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon dark cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

Directions

• In a microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips and butter in the microwave, stirring every 15 - 20 seconds until fully melted.
• Whisk in cocoa powder. The mixture should look like a smooth, but thick paste.
• Whisk both milks into the chocolate paste, until everything is fully combined and smooth. 
• Chill mixture in refrigerator for at least one hour. Freeze in the method of your choice. 

Banana-licious

Happy Friday the 13th!

Well, my first week back at school is over! It was nice getting back to a regular schedule, but the information overload was a bit much. Nonetheless, I love school (dork alert) and seeing my class again!

But I wanted to share with you my favorite after school/ after dinner treat! I am a sucker for ice cream, but I get a little ashamed of myself when I have a half gallon of the stuff in my freezer, and within the week it is gone! That was me not putting my nutrition education to good use.

Lately when a want something cold and creamy, I've been making some delectable Banana "Fro yo"

Now, don't be fooled by the name, because there is absolutely no yogurt or dairy in it! There's actually only one ingredient... Bananas! (surprise!) I just call it "fro yo" because the bananas have that creamy soft serve texture you find in fro yo.

This dessert literally takes about 1 minute to make, and almost the same amount of time to enjoy! Super simple and a great alternative to a high fat ice cream. So go make some and get your daily dose of potassium in a quick, vegan friendly way!!

Step 1: Freeze Bananas

Step 2: Put Bananas in Food Processor

Step 3: Pulse, pulse, pulse until the banana beings to chop up and get creamy. Warning: do not turn your food processor on and walk away. Bad things may happen and your food processor might blow up, so just don't walk away!

Half way through chopping, the bananas will look like the above picture. But you're not done! Keep pulsing away!

It's magic! The bananas are now nice and creamy like fro yo!

Step 5: Devour

Garnish with your favorite accompaniments!

What are your favorite mid day snacks or treats? Do you have any recipes that need a healthy makeover? I'd love to hear your thoughts!