More ice cream! Three ingredients each: Banana ice cream and Raspberry ice cream

fter our fig ice cream extravaganza the other day, there was a bit of cream left over, and far be it from our family to allow that to go to waste!

Also, we stopped by a beautiful fruit stand in Victoria yesterday and Mom got another flat of raspberries--big as your thumb, these babies! So naturally we thought: raspberry ice cream. Good thought. I found a few recipes online but ended up culling the best of a few and making my own mixture. Keeping the raspberries fresh was key, as was not using eggs (we ran out after making potato salad for lunch!).

See, I meant it. Big as my thumb, anyway.

Raspberry Ice Cream
2 cups cream
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups fresh raspberries

Combine the cold cream and sugar in a bowl, stirring with a whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Put the mixture in your ice cream machine/mixer and let it mix for 10-15 minutes, then add the raspberries and mix for another few minutes until well blended.

When I added the berries, the mixture got quite soft again for awhile, and Pa made the bright suggestion that I should stick the berries in the freezer to chill prior to making it next time. I agree that might help speed the process up a bit, but we persevered and it was a good half hour later with occasional stirs that the ice cream was hard enough to scoop into dishes.

This makes not quite a quart in a Donvier ice cream make. I would recommend splitting this between six people, rather than the four we had... I know, we didn't have to dish up the whole batch, but it just kinda happened, and then we all walked around in a raspberry ice cream coma for a bit. Not eating cream on a daily basis, it was quite rich. Quite yummy too.

I had also glimpsed a recipe a couple of days ago on a Serious Eats post on my sidebar over there to the right... banana ice cream, using frozen bananas. Since I usually have some sad overripe bananas on my counter at home, I thought experimenting with this might be a good thing. And why not do it while visiting the parents, so they can be guinea pigs too?! Two birds with one stone. How handy.

Banana, Honey and Peanut Butter Ice Cream
serves 1
Adapted from The Kitchn

1 large, slightly over-ripe banana
1 teaspoon peanut butter
1 teaspoon honey

Peel banana. Slice it into about ten chunks. Freeze the chunks. Once frozen, put them in a food processor with peanut butter and honey. Puree until creamy, like soft serve ice cream, stopping the processor to scrape the sides when necessary.

OR

Forget to peel banana. Freeze it. Wrestle futilely with now-frozen banana peel. Give up and let it sit for 30 minutes to thaw. Peel banana like a two-year-old. Break it into three or four pieces. Add pieces to food processor with peanut butter and honey. Puree until creamy, like soft serve ice cream, stopping the processor to scrape the sides when necessary.

I picked the first method (doubled it to share with the family) and it worked really well. The whole family enjoyed it, thoroughly. Of course, there was also consensus that a dribble of chocolate would be a wonderful addition to the banana/peanut butter flavor and I have to agree. But for a dairy-free ice cream, that is one amazing dessert!