Banana nice cream
A creamy “ice cream” dessert made from nothing but frozen overripe bananas and two dates — no added sugar, no milk and no ice cream maker.
Nice cream is blended frozen banana. A ripe banana has plenty of sugar, a little fibre and almost no fat, and blended while frozen it is surprisingly creamy — pectin and tiny pieces of flesh behave much like a stabiliser. It is clearly the healthier option: about 100 kcal per 100 g instead of roughly 215 for cream ice cream, with no fat and no added sugar. The trade-offs: it always tastes of banana, it is best eaten straight away — in the freezer it sets rock hard — and the UK’s NHS counts the sugars in blended fruit as “free” sugars, so it isn’t an unlimited portion.
Type: Sorbet · Servings: 4 · Difficulty: Easy
Equipment
Ingredients
- 500 g overripe banana (brown-speckled, peeled) (4–5 bananas with brown spots)
- 40 g dates (Medjool, pitted) (2 Medjool dates, pitted)
Making the mix
- Peel the bananas and cut them into rounds about 1 cm thick.
- Pit the dates; if they are dry, soak them in hot water for 10 minutes and drain.
Method — High-speed blender
- Spread the banana rounds on a baking tray lined with baking paper so they don’t touch, and freeze for at least 6 hours (or overnight). Once frozen, you can store them in a bag.
- Put the frozen bananas and the dates in a high-speed blender or food processor. Blend in short pulses, scraping down the sides and pushing the mix towards the blades.
- First you get crumbly “semolina”, then a thick paste and finally a smooth cream like soft-serve — this takes 3–5 minutes. If the blender struggles, add 1–2 tablespoons of water or plant-based drink.
- Serve straight away. For firmer scoops, transfer to a container and leave in the freezer for 30–60 minutes.
A less powerful blender can overheat — blend in shorter bursts and let it cool down. A jug blender with a tamper or a food processor works best.
Total time: 6 h 15 min
Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines
- Blend the unfrozen bananas with the dates into a smooth purée and pour it into the CREAMi tub up to the MAX line. Put the lid on and freeze level for 24 hours.
- Put the tub in the machine and run the Sorbet program.
- If the result is powdery, add 1–2 tablespoons of water or plant-based drink and run Re-spin.
Programme: Sorbet
Don’t freeze whole pieces of banana in the CREAMi — the tub must be filled with an even block, otherwise the blade can jam.
Total time: 24 h 15 min
Stages
- Preparation
- 10 min
- Freezing
- 6 h
- Processing in the machine
- 5 min
- Total time
- 6 h 15 min
Serving and storage
Straight away and soft, with berries, cacao nibs or a teaspoon of peanut butter.
Frozen banana rounds keep in a bag for 2–3 months. Finished nice cream is best straight away; leftovers harden in the freezer and need blending again before eating.
Tips
- The bananas must be properly ripe, with brown spots. Greenish ones taste floury — they still have lots of starch and little sugar.
- It works with just bananas and no dates too; the result is simply less sweet and hardens sooner.
- Add a handful of frozen raspberries, a spoonful of cocoa or peanut butter — you get a new flavour without any extra sugar.
- For children under 1 year, nice cream is suitable without the dates and toppings, served soft in small spoonfuls.
Why it works
According to the USDA, an overripe banana has about 16 % sugars and almost no starch, while a less ripe one has about 12 % sugars and the rest as starch. Glucose and fructose lower the freezing point more than sucrose does, which is why a mix of overripe bananas is soft once blended. But its solids are only about 26 % (cream ice cream has 35–44 %) — the rest is water, which turns into solid ice in the freezer. That is why nice cream is an “eat it now” dessert. The WHO recommends limiting free sugars to less than 10 % of energy intake; it doesn’t count the sugars in whole fruit among them, but the UK’s NHS points out that blending releases the sugars from fruit and they then behave similarly as far as your teeth are concerned.