It’s time for another super easy banana ice cream. This time, it’s chocolate banana ice cream. Simple, delicious and healthy. It’s a combination we all adore.

I’ve shared my recipes for chocolate mint banana ice cream and for chocolate chip raspberry banana ice cream before. This one is much easier, as you probably have all the ingredients on hand.

If you don’t have any frozen banana slices, make some first. Slice a ripe banana, spread out the slices on the cutting board, and freeze for at least an hour. Waiting for them to freeze is the longest part of the recipe.

If you have previously frozen banana slices, and they’ve been in the freezer for more than a day, take them out of the freezer and defrost for 5-10 minutes. They’ll blend better this way. You don’t need to defrost banana slices that haven’t been in the freezer that long. They’ll be fine.

Put about a banana and a half’s worth of slices per person in your food processor. Don’t try to make a huge batch – you can’t refreeze this ice cream. It will solidify too hard if you do. Banana ice cream is something you make because you want it right now, not later.

Add about a tablespoon of ground chocolate or chocolate drink mix. The better the quality, the better the banana ice cream will turn out. I like to use Ghirardelli’s ground chocolate. I keep the big container on hand because it makes good hot chocolate too. You could probably make this work with Ovaltine or Quik, but I haven’t tested them. Their chocolate flavors aren’t strong enough for me.

Use the food processor on the pulse setting. Running it too long will be too hard on the motor. Besides, the bits of banana will climb out of the reach of the blades, and you have to knock them down sometimes. Keep this up until the chocolate banana ice cream is smooth.

Serve immediately. You can add toppings if you want, or drop a bit of fruit in at the very end so that you get chunks of fruit in your ice cream.

I have just one kid who doesn’t love this. It’s strange. She loves bananas. She loves frozen bananas. And she loves chocolate. But she doesn’t like chocolate banana ice cream. I don’t get it. But since the rest of my kids adore this, I’ll keep making it. The one who doesn’t like it can snack on the frozen banana slices.

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Chocolate Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 frozen bananas, sliced
• 1 tbsp ground chocolate

Instructions

1. If your bananas have not already been frozen and sliced, slice them, put the slices on a cutting board, and freeze for at least one hour.

2. If your bananas have been frozen for more than a day, take them out of the freezer and defrost for 5-10 minutes before proceeding.

3. Place frozen banana slices in food processor, approximately one and a half banana's worth per person. Do not make more than you plan to serve immediately.

4. Add one tablespoon of ground chocolate per person.

5. Use the pulse setting of the food processor to blend the bananas. Knock down the bits that climb out of the range of the blades. Continue pulsing food processor until chocolate banana ice cream is smooth.

6. Optional: Add choice of fruit chunks and give a quick pulse of the food processor to add to ice cream.

7. Serve immediately. Leftovers do not freeze well.

I love banana bread. It’s one of the great uses for bananas that have ripened a little too far. The one thing that makes it better is adding chocolate… hence, chocolate chip cranberry banana bread.

Banana bread and banana ice cream are the two reasons I keep so many bananas in my freezer. Either recipe can use frozen bananas. You just have to defrost them for a while to make banana bread. Defrosted bananas are even mushier than overripe bananas, but that’s fine for this kind of recipe.

You can, of course, also simply use overripe bananas without freezing them first. The only reason I use frozen ones as often as I do for this recipe is that I’m not always in the mood to make something when I realize my bananas are overripe. You know how fast that happens.

You can freeze bananas in their peels if you’re making banana bread out of them. Don’t do that for banana ice cream, though. Sliced frozen bananas work for either recipe, so if I have the time, I usually slice the bananas before freezing.

Banana bread is definitely not necessarily healthy. While it has bananas, it also has a lot of added sugar. It still makes a pretty good breakfast as well as a dessert.

You want about 3-6 overripe bananas for this recipe. That’s the other reason I love using frozen bananas – it’s not always easy to get that many overripe bananas when I want to do this. There are times when I buy bananas and for some reason my family ignores that whole bunch, but most of the time I only get one or two overripe bananas at a time. That’s not enough for this bread.

The exact number of bananas you’ll need for this recipe depends on how big the bananas are and how much banana flavor you want in the bread. Aim for about 2 cups of bananas after they’ve been mashed if you really need a measurement. I’ve gone as low as three bananas with good results.

The chocolate chips in the banana bread aren’t strictly necessary, but they are good! You could also add nuts if you like. I don’t because one of my kids absolutely hates nuts. Not allergic, thank goodness, just doesn’t like them. The dried cranberries give a nice extra flavor to the bread that goes very well with the chocolate.

If I want to improve things just a little, I replace some of the regular flour with whole wheat flour. This doesn’t change the taste that much so long as it’s less than half the total flour, but I like to think that it’s a little bit healthier.

Start out by defrosting any bananas that need to be defrosted. This may take an hour or so. Flip the bananas over occasionally as they defrost – it goes more quickly that way.

When you’re ready to get started, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Peel all the bananas you’re using in the recipe and place in a bowl. Defrosted bananas will just kind of slide out of their peels. They’ll look unappetizing, but the taste is just fine. Mash the bananas and put aside.

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Stir gently to combine. No mixer yet unless you need a cloud of flour all over your kitchen.

In another bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the eggs, vanilla and mashed bananas and blend. Pour this mixture into the flour mixture.

Do not overmix this part. You just want to moisten the entire flour mixture. Stirring with a spoon or spatula may go better than using your mixer.

Add the chocolate chips and cranberries, and stir in with a spoon.

Pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. Bake for 60-65 minutes in the oven. Check for doneness with a toothpick. It should come out clean… unless it hits a chocolate chip. Melted chocolate doesn’t mean the banana bread isn’t done, of course. Test the banana bread in a couple places if you aren’t sure that it’s done.

Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before moving the loaf to a wire rack to finish cooling. Or be lazy and serve the chocolate chip cranberry banana bread straight from the loaf pan.

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Chocolate Chip Cranberry Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 3-6 mashed, overripe bananas
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries

Instructions

1. Defrost bananas if frozen. This should take about an hour if the bananas are still in the peels, less time if they are sliced.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F after bananas have defrosted.

3. Peel and mash all bananas. Put aside.

4. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

5. Cream together brown sugar and butter. Mix in vanilla, eggs and mashed bananas. Blend well.

6. Add banana mixture to flour mixture. Stir in until moistened. Add in chocolate chips and dried cranberries, and stir.

7. Grease a loaf pan and pour in banana bread dough. Bake for 60-65 minutes in oven, or until a toothpick comes out clean after being inserted in the middle. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from the loaf pan.

The excuse to make banana ice cream is one of the few good things about bananas getting on the old side. You can make it just fine with fresh banana, but old ones need to get used up. Something that tastes like ice cream, yet is almost entirely made of fruit makes a pretty amazing treat. After looking in the fridge, I decided that this batch of bananas would be made into raspberry chocolate chip banana ice cream.

I have been fortunate enough lately to find fresh raspberries at my local dollar store. Those little containers that cost a couple bucks most of the time at the regular grocery store are only $1 at the dollar store. The one by me carries lots of produce, and it’s usually a better price than what you’d pay at the grocery store. Most of the time it’s plenty fresh. I’ve seen the occasional exception, sadly, but in general, they’re very good about their produce.

I love getting berries there. My kids gobble them up. It’s nice being able to give them a healthy treat at a good price.

We get some unusual berries there too. We tried kiwiberries from there one time. They do in fact look like miniature kiwifruits without the fuzz. They’re a little more tart too. Overall, I’ll stick with regular kiwifruits because you get more for your money.

Back to the raspberry chocolate chip banana ice cream.

We’ve had a really warm fall, and my youngest was complaining that she wanted ice cream. I wasn’t in the mood to go to the store, but we had four bananas sitting out and getting on the old side. One of me, three kids… sounded about right.

We sliced up the bananas and spread them out on the cutting board to go into the freezer. Took them out a couple hours later and threw them into my Vitamix.

Now, I’ve made banana ice cream in my dinky food processor before, and I have to say that I like that method better overall. I used my Vitamix this time because my food processor is really, really small, and can only work on about a banana at a time. That’s no good when you have kids wanting their treats now. So I used the Vitamix.

I prefer the food processor because it’s easier to pulse it. Banana ice cream is hard on a blender. You can do it, but you have to make sure to pulse the blender. Turning the Vitamix on and off isn’t that much harder than pulsing a blender, but it’s just a little annoying to me. It was also a lot harder to get all the bananas into the mix. I think that’s a volume problem.

The blended bananas have to be knocked down a lot when you’re mixing a bunch of them. By the time I was ready to add in the raspberries, I decided to finish the job off by hand.

This turned out to be a really good idea. I put the banana ice cream into a plastic container, then added the fresh raspberries and chocolate chips. No need to freeze the raspberries first – I wanted them to break up just a little.

This worked out beautifully. The raspberries broke up just enough and froze as I mixed. The chocolate chips behaved like chocolate chips. The mix looked beautiful.

The real test, of course, was the kids. Me too, I suppose, but kids can be picky.

My older two loved the ice cream. They want to make this again and again.

My youngest, the one who was begging for ice cream? Hated it. She loves bananas. She loves raspberries. She loves chocolate. And she’s just contrary enough to not like the combination. That’s kids for you. Raspberry chocolate chip banana ice cream was decidedly not to her taste. She took a few bites, then gave the rest to her sister.

I’ll gladly make this again sometime regardless of one child’s opinion. I thought it was wonderful.

3.11 from 2606 votes

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Raspberry Chocolate Chip Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1 banana
• 1 handful fresh raspberries
• 1-2 tbsp chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Peel and slice bananas, one per serving. Spread slices out on cutting board and place in freezer for at least 2-3 hours.

2. Remove frozen bananas from freezer. Pour into food processor. Pulse food processor until banana ice cream is smooth. You may need to knock it down off the sides regularly.

3. Remove banana ice cream from food processor and place in a container with enough room for mixing.

4. Add raspberries and chocolate chips. These measurements aren't precise. Throw in what looks good to you.

5. Mix with a spoon thoroughly. Be a little gentle so that you don't completely break up the raspberries. They should break up some but not entirely.

6. Serve immediately. This will not go well if you put the raspberry chocolate chip banana ice cream back into the freezer.

I love making banana “ice cream.” The basic sort is nothing but a pureed frozen banana, and it is so good and healthy. It’s even more fun adding flavors to make it taste like other ice creams. Chocolate mint banana ice cream is utterly delightful.

It’s easy to keep the supplies to make chocolate mint banana ice cream on hand. Any time bananas get close to overripe, I chop them up and spread them out on a plastic cutting board. They then go into the freezer for a couple hours. After that, they can be bagged up and kept until someone either snacks on them or I make them into banana ice cream.

If the banana chunks have been frozen for more than a day, they make better ice cream if you give them about five minutes to slightly defrost first. It will become smooth more quickly this way. Not that you’ll mind much if the ice cream isn’t perfectly smooth – it’s good either way.

I use about the equivalent of one to one and a half frozen bananas per serving. When the bananas are frozen in batches it’s hard to be precise. Fortunately, recipes like this don’t require precision.

We grow chocolate mint in our garden. It’s a bit more fun than regular mint, with its hint of chocolate. It’s nice having it available when a treat needs a little mint flavor. Fresh mint can be pretty powerful, but that’s part of the fun. I used about a tablespoon of them. You can use more or less, depending on your taste. I love the look of the mint blended into the bananas.

If you don’t have fresh mint, peppermint extract can be used as well, but be very careful. That stuff is powerful! For a single banana, you would be best off adding it just a couple drops at a time.

I used about a tablespoon of 63% cacao chocolate chips. Whatever chocolate you have around the house will be good.

Bananas are sweet enough that you shouldn’t need any further sweetener. That’s one of the things I love about banana ice cream. It’s as healthy as you care to make it. Do it right, and it’s pretty amazing.

Put the bananas and mint into your food processor or blender. I used my tiny food processor because I wanted to do just one banana. I would need to do at least two bananas for this to work well in my blender – larger containers need something more to work with.

Pulsing the food processor works best. You will need to take the lid off frequently and knock the bits of banana back down to the blades. They want to escape. It will take a few minutes for the frozen bananas to start to turn smooth.

You can add the chocolate chips at the start or as you get close to done blending the bananas and mint. I like them broken into smaller pieces, but not pureed into the mixture. In my tiny food processor, that’s at the start, but later on in the blender.

Serve immediately. I don’t recommend putting this back into the freezer. It won’t end well that way. I love the way this looks. There are little flecks of mint leaf throughout.

3.15 from 2509 votes

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Chocolate Mint Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1 banana, sliced and frozen
• 1 tbsp chocolate mint or to taste
• 1 tbsp chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Slice banana. Spread out slices and freeze for at least 2-3 hours on a flat surface.

2. Place banana slices and mint into food processor or blender. Pulse several times to start pureeing the bananas. Knock the mixture down frequently to keep the mix in reach of the blades. It will take a few minutes for the mixture to start to turn smooth.

3. Add chocolate chips and pulse a few more times to break them up a little. Serve immediately.

Recipe Notes

Ingredients are per serving.