Banana Pudding Ice Cream

Active time: 20 minutes | Steep time: 12+ hours | Freeze time: 5+ hours

As per usual, I got my inspiration for this recipe from ingredients I had laying around the kitchen. I bought more bananas than I needed for a banana bread and had to come up with a way to use the remaining bananas up. Since I’ve been obsessing over steeping different food items in cream lately, I was like, “BANANA ICE CREAM”. I found some graham crackers in the pantry and realized that that would make it even better. I genuinely had no clue if this would even taste like a banana pudding, let alone taste good, but hey, that happens a lot when you experiment in the kitchen. But guys, I am IN LOVE with how this came out. It tastes exactly like banana pudding, but in ice cream form and I just can’t get over how perfect this ice cream is.

Ingredients:

• 2 bananas, sliced

• 5 graham cracker sheets, divided

• 2 cups heavy cream

• 14 ounces (1 can) sweetened condensed milk

• 2 tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)

• ¼ tsp salt

Directions:

1. Heat heavy cream with half of the graham crackers and the sliced bananas in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the cream just barely starts to simmer. Remove from heat and cover the saucepan; this is called steeping and helps infuse the flavor of the bananas and graham crackers into the cream.

2. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, then transfer to an airtight container and chill in the refrigerator overnight (12+ hours).

3. Once the cream is thoroughly chilled & steeped, keep it in the refrigerator while you work on the next step.

4. Place the condensed milk, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.

5. Now transfer the chilled banana cream to a large mixing bowl. With an electric mixer, whisk the cream, starting on medium speed, then increasing to medium-high after about one minute. Whisk until the cream has stiff peaks (if you turn the whisk upside-down the cream will hold its shape).

6. Scoop about ⅓ of the whipped cream into the sweetened condensed milk mixture and gently fold the cream in with a spatula. Once incorporated, pour the sweetened condensed milk mixture into the bowl with the remaining whipped cream.

7. Fold everything together gently with a spatula until the mixture is light and well combined, but try not to overmix.

8. Transfer the cream mixture to a 9x5x3 pan (a loaf pan) and place in the freezer to chill for around 2 hours.

9. After 2 hours, crush the remaining graham crackers & mix them into the ice cream (it should still be quite soft). Continue to chill for another 2-3 hours until completely hardened. Keep the loaf pan covered with tin foil or plastic wrap and enjoy whenever you’re craving ice cream!