Banana split
A split banana and three scoops of three flavours in one dish. It looks like decoration, but it only works if the banana is not overripe.
Sundaes and bowls · Hands-on: 12 min · Waiting: no waiting · Total time: 12 min · Servings: 2 · Difficulty: Easy
A banana split is not eaten from the top down but across: every spoonful should have a piece of banana and a piece of ice cream.
Two things make it good. The first is the ripeness of the banana — an overripe one is soft, oversweet and collapses into mush under the ice cream. You want a yellow banana with a few brown spots, still firm. The second is picking three flavours that do not compete: the classic is vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, because each has a different acidity and sweetness.
The dish should be long and chilled. The banana goes in cut side up like two boats, with the ice cream between them — that way the scoops do not roll.
What you need
- 2 ripe but firm bananas
- 2 scoops vanilla ice cream
- 2 scoops chocolate ice cream
- 2 scoops strawberry ice cream or sorbet
- 4 tbsp chocolate or caramel sauce
- 2 tbsp strawberry purée (strawberries blended with a teaspoon of sugar)
- 150 ml whipped cream
- 2 tbsp chopped roasted peanuts or almonds
- juice of half a lemon
- 2 cocktail cherries — optional
Method
- Chill two long dishes in the freezer. Take the ice creams out 5 minutes before serving.
- Peel the bananas and halve them lengthways. Brush the cut faces with lemon juice so they do not darken.
- Lay two banana halves cut side up in each dish, like two boats side by side.
- Set three scoops between them in a row — vanilla in the middle, chocolate and strawberry on either side.
- Pour the chocolate sauce over the chocolate scoop, the strawberry purée over the strawberry one, and leave the vanilla plain or give it caramel.
- Pipe the whipped cream on top, scatter the nuts, add the cherries and serve immediately.
Tips
- The banana should not be cold — straight from the fridge it is rubbery. Keep it at room temperature.
- If you do not have three flavours, use three scoops of one and tell them apart with the sauces. Better than one flavour and one sauce.
- The peanuts are there for salt and crunch. An unsweetened topping holds the whole dish together in flavour.
- Two separate dishes beat one big sharing bowl — in a shared one everything melts fast.
Which ice cream works
Shop-bought will do, but homemade makes it a different dessert. These recipes of ours fit:
Amount: 3 scoops of three flavours (about 150 g) per serving
Egg-free vanilla ice cream (Philadelphia style)
Pure, creamy vanilla with no egg yolks — fresh, milky and ready without cooking a custard.
Chocolate ice cream
Deep chocolate flavour from both cocoa and dark chocolate, softened with three egg yolks.
Creamy strawberry ice cream
Ripe strawberries and cream — pink, fragrant and made without cooking the fruit.
Strawberry sorbet
A no-cook summer classic made from fresh strawberries — it tastes like strawberries straight from the garden.
Strawberry gelato (fragola)
A milk gelato packed with fresh, uncooked strawberries — it tastes like ripe strawberries and cream.
Dark chocolate gelato (cioccolato fondente)
A dark, intense chocolate gelato made with cocoa and dark chocolate. Not too sweet, with a long finish.
More desserts
Ice cream sundae with hot chocolate sauce
The classic sundae: vanilla ice cream, warm chocolate sauce and whipped cream. The sauce must be hot and thin — a thick one sets into a hard shell on the ice cream.
Spaghetti ice cream (Spaghettieis)
Vanilla ice cream pushed through a potato ricer looks like spaghetti, strawberry purée like tomato sauce and white chocolate like parmesan. It all comes down to the temperature of the ice cream.
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A dessert with ice cream is not an ice cream recipe — we do not compute its mix composition or nutrition.