Simply the Best Raw Cacao and Banana Ice Cream
“This recipe is great because it’s easy to make and tastes great.”
Ingredients
Frozen Bananas (in pieces)
2 Tablespoons Organic Raw Cacao Powder
1 tsp of Inulin (various types)
Water, a plant based milk, or dairy milk depending on your preference.
Method
Grab your blender or nutribullet and fill with your desired amount of frozen banana pieces. For a normal size nutribullet 3/4 of the way makes a pretty large bowlful of ice cream.
Add in dry ingredients (raw cacao powder and inulin) on top.
Add a little bit of water or your chosen milk to your blender/nutribullet and put the lid on then shake (just enough water to mix around first), then blend it using the motor. Balance here is key, too much water and you’ll have a thickshake or smoothie (can always add more frozen banana later) and not enough water and it might not mix and you might need to add some more water for it to be able to blend into ice cream. This recipe does give your nutribullet/blender a good workout for sure.
Once it’s mixed to the desired consistency chuck it in a bowl and queue up your latest Netflix binge and you are good to go!
Why It’s Good For You
No added sugar, the sweetness of the banana balances really nicely with the bitterness of the raw cacao to make a sweet treat. So the only sugar is the fructose, and glucose in the bananas [1], and since you are consuming the whole fruit you are getting some fibre too which will help help to lessen glucose spikes.
Raw Cacao contains polyphenols,[2] if you have autoimmune issues and are trying to boost your levels of Akkermansia muciniphila through diet this a good way to to support that.
Inulin can be used in this recipe to add Oligosaccharides into your diet as a prebiotic to help feed certain beneficial bacteria.[3]
Notes
This recipe also works well with frozen berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.
You can add in other stuff as well for different textures. Oats work well and will give it a less smooth but more thick shake type flavour, cassava flour works well too, (have used this to make a mousse using unfrozen bananas and refrigerated overnight to set).
You do need to make this ice cream and eat straight away, it will melt a lot quicker than a dairy based ice cream. I probably wouldn’t freeze this ice cream either, I think it would go pretty hard so best to make it and eat it fresh.
References
Australian Food Composition Database. (n.d.). https://afcd.foodstandards.gov.au/fooddetails.aspx?PFKID=F000262
Rimbach, G., Melchin, M., Moehring, J., & Wagner, A. E. (2009). Polyphenols from Cocoa and Vascular Health—A Critical Review. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 10(10), 4290–4309. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms10104290
Niness, K. R. (1999). Inulin and oligofructose: What are they? Journal of Nutrition, 129(7), 1402S-1406S. https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/129.7.1402s
