Banana nice cream, plus a blue spirulina version

Banana nice cream is frozen banana blended until it turns into something that looks and eats like soft-serve. It is often called one-ingredient ice cream, and bananas really are the whole base here: the recipe card adds only a little vanilla, a pinch of salt and, if the machine needs it, a spoonful of plant milk. What makes it work is the order of operations. Ripe bananas, sliced before freezing, frozen hard, then processed patiently past the crumbly stage, give a smooth, creamy result without watering it down.

Why frozen bananas turn creamy

Most fruit blended from frozen becomes a slush or a sorbet: juicy fruit is mostly water, and the water freezes into crystals you can feel on your tongue. Bananas are different. They are dense and fleshy rather than juicy, and a ripe banana is high in sugar and contains pectin, so when the frozen fruit is broken up finely it holds together as a thick, smooth purée instead of separating into ice and pulp. That is why frozen banana is also the base of so many dairy-free milkshakes.

The texture changes in stages, and knowing them is most of the technique:

1. Crumbs. The first pulses break the slices into something like gravel. It looks as if it will never work.
2. Paste. After a minute or two the crumbs clump into a sticky, pebbly mass that rides around the blade.
3. Soft-serve. Quite suddenly the mass turns pale, glossy and smooth, and the machine sounds smoother too. Stop here.

Adding milk during the crumb stage is a common mistake. It does help the blade, but every spoonful makes the result softer and closer to a smoothie. Scrape the bowl down instead and give it time.

Ripeness, slicing and freezing

Ripeness decides the flavor. Use bananas that are fully yellow with brown speckles. As bananas ripen, much of their starch turns into sugar, so a speckled banana tastes sweeter and blends creamier, while a banana with green at the tips tastes starchy and slightly chalky once frozen. Very ripe, mostly brown bananas work too and give the sweetest, most banana-forward result.

Slice before freezing. A whole frozen banana is hard to peel and too big for most machines. Rounds about 1/2 inch thick freeze quickly and evenly and break down without straining the motor.

Freeze in a single layer. Slices piled into a bag freeze into one solid lump. Spread them on a parchment-lined baking sheet so they do not touch, freeze them hard, then move them to a bag. A batch of frozen slices kept in the freezer means nice cream is always a few minutes away.

Food processor or blender

A food processor is the easiest tool: its wide bowl and flat blade work frozen fruit without any liquid. A high-speed blender with a tamper also works; put the milk in first and keep pushing the slices into the blades. An ordinary blender usually stalls on frozen slices unless you add more liquid, which gives a softer, drinkable result. Small single-serve blenders struggle most.

Letting the slices sit on the counter for a few minutes before processing, as the card says, takes the hardest edge off and is easier on the machine.

Recipes disagree on this point: some say a food processor only turns banana into flakes, others that a blender cannot do it without milk. Both are describing the same crumb stage. In a processor the flakes are stage one, and they turn smooth if you keep going and scraping; in a blender the fruit only moves if there is liquid or a tamper to push it down. Choose the machine you have and expect the stages either way.

Pint-style ice cream machines

Machines that freeze a pint container solid and then shave it with a spinning blade make nice cream differently. Blend fresh ripe bananas with the vanilla, salt and a splash of plant milk until smooth, pour into the pint container, freeze it level until solid all the way through, usually overnight, and then run the machine’s ice cream setting. If it comes out powdery, add a tablespoon of plant milk and run the re-spin setting. The result is closer to scooped ice cream than to soft-serve.

With no blender or processor

There is no real substitute for a machine with frozen slices: a fork or a potato masher cannot break them down. The nearest option is to mash very ripe fresh bananas with the vanilla and salt until smooth, spread the purée in a shallow container and freeze it, scraping and stirring it with a fork every 30 minutes until it is frozen. It comes out icier and more like a frozen purée than soft-serve, but it still tastes of the same thing.

One banana or a single serving

One frozen banana is too little for most full-size processors, because the blade cannot catch so few slices. Use a mini food processor or a small blender cup, add a tablespoon of plant milk from the start, and stop to scrape often. In a standard processor, two bananas is about the smallest batch that goes through the stages on the card reliably.

Soft-serve or scoopable

Straight from the processor, nice cream is soft-serve: it slumps slowly in the bowl and starts to soften and run within minutes. For neat scoops, spread it in a loaf pan, cover it and freeze it briefly, as in the last step on the card. Leave it much longer and it freezes rock hard, because unlike churned ice cream it has almost no fat and no added sugar to keep it soft. If that happens, let it stand at room temperature until a spoon goes in, or break it into chunks and process it again for a few seconds.

The blue spirulina version

Blue nice cream gets its color from blue spirulina, a blue color extract made from spirulina and sold as a powder. Add it to the bananas at the start of processing: begin with 1/2 teaspoon for this batch and add more, a little at a time, for a deeper color. The pale yellow-cream of the bananas softens and slightly greens the shade, so expect a light aqua blue rather than deep blue. Blue spirulina has very little taste of its own, so the nice cream still tastes of banana and vanilla. It is not part of the nutrition on the card.

A few things to know before swapping:

• Green spirulina is not the same product. It turns nice cream teal-green and adds a distinct seaweed flavor.
• Butterfly pea flower powder also colors food blue, but it turns purple when it meets acid, so do not combine it with lemon or lime.
• Blue spirulina powders vary in strength, so use the color, not the measuring spoon, as your guide.

Other flavors from the same base

Each of these goes in with the bananas unless noted:

• Chocolate: 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. For a richer, churned version, see vegan chocolate ice cream.
• Matcha-lime: 1 to 2 teaspoons of matcha powder and the grated zest of one lime. Matcha is a tea and contains caffeine.
• Strawberry: replace one of the bananas with a cup of frozen strawberries. The result is a little icier, because strawberries are juicier than bananas.
• Peanut butter: 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter. It makes the mix stiffer, so process a little longer.
• Mint chip: a few drops of peppermint extract with the bananas; fold in chopped dairy-free dark chocolate after processing.
• Mango, pineapple or peach: replace one of the bananas with a cup of the frozen fruit. Like strawberries, these are juicier than banana, so the result is slightly icier and more sorbet-like.
• Richer, with coconut milk: use 2 tablespoons of canned coconut milk in place of the soy milk. The extra fat gives a creamier, slower-melting soft-serve; it adds coconut.
• Tangy, with plant-based yogurt: process in 1/4 cup of plain unsweetened soy or coconut yogurt once the bananas are smooth. It softens the texture, so freeze briefly afterward if you want scoops.
• With dates: 2 soft pitted dates, chopped, sweeten and add a caramel note. Process them with the bananas from the start so no pieces remain.
• With protein powder: add 1 scoop of vanilla or chocolate plant protein powder and 1 to 2 extra tablespoons of plant milk, since the powder absorbs liquid and makes the mix stiff.
• Cookie dough: fold in crumbled baked cookies instead of raw dough. The FDA says “DO NOT use raw cookie dough in ready-to-eat ice cream,” because flour is a raw ingredient, and egg-free dough is no exception.

Popsicles

Spoon freshly made soft-serve into ice-pop molds, tap them on the counter to settle it, add the sticks and freeze until solid. Nice cream freezes hard, so run the molds under warm water for a few seconds to release them.

Nice cream without bananas

Banana is what makes nice cream creamy without fat, so other fruit alone gives a sorbet rather than soft-serve. Frozen mango is the closest substitute; process it with a few tablespoons of canned coconut milk so it turns creamy rather than icy. The result tastes of mango and coconut, not banana.

Crumbled cookies make a good topping; vegan chocolate chip cookies broken into pieces and scattered over just before serving stay crunchy. For a richer frozen dessert made from a cooked coconut-milk and pistachio base, churned or no-churn, try vegan pistachio ice cream.

Sweetness without added sugar

The sweetness comes from the bananas: the recipe adds no sugar or syrup. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration explains that added sugars on a label “do not include naturally occurring sugars that are found in milk, fruits, and vegetables”, so the sugars on the card come almost entirely from the fruit. Cold dulls sweetness, so frozen desserts taste less sweet than they would at room temperature. If yours tastes flat, the fix is riper bananas next time; for now, a teaspoon of maple syrup works. How maple syrup, dates and other sweeteners compare explains the differences between them.

What goes wrong and how to fix it

• Icy or grainy: the slices picked up frost in the freezer, or too much milk went in. Keep frozen slices airtight and add liquid one tablespoon at a time.
• Stuck at the crumb stage: keep processing and scraping. If the machine is laboring, let the bowl stand for a minute so the fruit softens slightly.
• Runny: the bananas were not frozen solid, or the machine ran so long it warmed the mix. Freeze it in a shallow container until it firms up.
• Gray or brown streaks: the bananas browned before freezing. Slice and freeze them soon after peeling. The color does not change the flavor much.

Storing it

Nice cream is at its best right after blending. Leftovers can go into a covered container in the freezer; FoodSafety.gov notes that freezer storage guidance is “for quality only” and that frozen foods stored continuously at 0°F (-18°C) or below “can be kept indefinitely.” The texture is what suffers: it sets hard and can turn icy, so let it soften or re-blend it before serving. Do not leave melted nice cream out and refreeze it later; the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service advises throwing away perishable food left at room temperature for more than 2 hours (1 hour if the temperature is over 90°F).

Allergy and ingredient notes

As written, the recipe contains soy, from the small amount of soy milk. Use oat milk or any other plant milk for a soy-free version, or leave the milk out if your machine manages without it. The peanut butter variation contains peanuts, the coconut milk and coconut yogurt versions contain coconut, and chopped nut toppings add tree nuts; check chocolate and cookie toppings for milk, nuts and soy if you are avoiding them.