While visiting my sister in law and her husband recently, she opened my eyes to the world of frozen bananas made into (almost) frozen yogurt. I have seen recipes like this pop up around the blog world but just like the cauliflower mashed potatoes, it just seemed too healthy to be delicious. Yet once again I am happy to be proven wrong. My SIL had a Yonannas maker that pushed bananas as well as other fruit through it's machine and out came fruit with frozen yogurt consistency. And it was delicious. I was sold and wanted to make it myself but was hoping to find a way that didn't require buying another kitchen appliance. And low and behold my handy dandy food processor saved the day. I am constantly surprised at how much I use it.
What you will need:
-1 frozen banana (wait until the banana is ripe with a little bit of brown spots on the peel--this ensures that it is sweet enough)
-About 5 frozen strawberries
Place bananas and strawberries in food processor and process.
As it starts processing, stop along the way to scrape any fruit from the sides of the bowl to make sure the chunks all get blended. It will take awhile for it to get to yogurt like consistency so let it do it's thing for a few minutes.
It is ready to serve once it starts resembling an ice cream consistency.
This makes about a one cup serving.
Now, because you want the honest truth, this does NOT taste like ice cream. More like a fruity strawberry sorbet. If you are trying to be good with what you are eating, it will definitely curb your sweet tooth but don't expect it to be milky. But I think it is pretty darn delicious and it definitely is satisfying to my taste buds as well as mentally for choosing a healthier option.
While I was at it I wanted to try a chocolate version. I added about one tablespoon of dark chocolate chips with one banana and it came out pretty good.
The chocolate chips did not process down as well so it has little bites of chocolate in it and the banana flavor is much stronger than it is with the strawberries. If you love bananas and chocolate you may like this one but I definitely found the strawberry version much sweeter and tastier.
I tried making a vanilla flavored version using vanilla extract and it didn't come out very well. I will keep on testing new flavors and will let you know if I come up with anything worth sharing. I also tried freezing a batch to see how it's consistency held up and it was about the same. Much like a really hard carton of ice cream, if you give it a few minutes it is scoopable.
// Have you ever tried this faux banana frozen yogurt before? Any flavor variations I should try?
