For my birthday last year, Caitlin gave me a CuisinArt automatic ice cream maker. Having always been an avid consumer of ice cream, but never a producer of it, I had no idea how easy and inexpensive it was to make my own. Not only can you avoid eating 17 varieties of chemical nastiness by making your own homemade ice cream, you can also make flavors that you will never find on a grocery store shelf. There are thousands of ice cream recipes online, but there is nothing quite like having a cookbook written by an authority on the subject – David Lebovitz’s book, The Perfect Scoop, is that must-have guidebook to all things ice cream. From the perennial favorites like chocolate and vanilla to the wilder (but equally fabulous) concoctions like Fresh Fig Ice Cream and Olive Oil Ice Cream.
David Lebovitz is an authority on all things dessert, and if you buy only one book of ice cream recipes, The Perfect Scoop should be it. Perhaps my favorite among all of the recipes of his that I’ve tried is the Roasted Banana Ice Cream. It’s simple to make, doesn’t require any exotic ingredients, and is incredibly delicious. I have made this ice cream so many times now that I know the recipe by heart. I have made a few modifications to it, and you certainly can modify it even further. I have never been a strict follower of recipes and have found that with ice cream in particular you have a bit more freedom to add and subtract ingredient amounts than if you are making something like bread.
What I used to make this:
Adapted from David Lebovitz’s Roasted Banana Ice Cream recipe:
2-4 Ripe Bananas (I only had two very large bananas & it turned out perfectly – I have also increased the number to four. Lebovitz’s original recipe calls for three.)
1/3 Cup Brown Sugar (depending upon how many bananas you use you can either add a little or subtract a little, but 1/3 cup gives the perfect amount of sweetness in my opinion)
1 tbsp Butter (I have made the ice cream without butter when I found that I had run out, and it also turned out just fine)
2 cups Whole Milk (The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups, but I haven’t noticed any decrease in flavor by adding a bit more and since I love to eat as much ice cream as possible, 2 cups goes even farther)
2 tbsp Granulated Sugar
1/2 tbsp Vanilla Extract
1 1/2 tsp Lemon Juice
1/4 tsp salt
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400 F. For this recipe you will want bananas that are ripe and yellow – brown spots are fine – the riper the better. Peel them and slice them – the size of your slices doesn’t really matter, but I usually make the slices about 1/4 of an inch thick. Put the sliced bananas in an oven safe baking dish and toss them with the butter and brown sugar. I typically melt the butter to make it easier to coat the bananas with.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until the bananas are browned, stirring them once while cooking. You don’t want to burn them, just to bring them to a beautiful golden brown to release their natural sweetness. In the oven I used, 30 minutes was enough.
Once you take them out of the oven scrape the bananas and syrup from the dish into a food processor or blender. I just used an immersion blender while making it this time and found that to work fine as well. Add the granulated sugar, vanilla extract, lemon juice, salt, and whole milk and puree until very smooth.
Refrigerate the mixture – some versions call for 4-8 hours or even overnight, but really you just want to get it cold enough so that your ice cream maker’s chilling chamber stays frozen for long enough to make the ice cream. I really have no patience to wait almost a full day before eating the ice cream I just made, so I just use a second freezer bowl which I can put the pureed mixture right into. Instead of waiting 8 hours for the mixture to cool, it only takes about 15-20 minutes. If you don’t have a spare freezer bowl, you could try chilling a glass bowl in the freezer prior to making the ice cream and that will at least cut down on the cooling time a bit. Once the mixture is cold, you can put it into your ice cream maker and within about 20 minutes you will have ready to eat Roasted Banana Ice Cream that will be an instant hit.
Let me know if you make it (you really should) & how it turns out! Do you have a favorite ice cream recipe? Share it as a comment. 
Coat the bananas with the brown sugar & butter
Roasted bananas fresh out of the oven
