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How To Make (Impostor) Ice Cream



I love ice cream. I love its sugary, creamy, cold goodness. 
To me, there is no better ice cream than the ice cream they have at Braums. Unfortunately I'm hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest Braums, so I make due with things like Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs. It's a hard life. 

Even the substitute ice creams have fallen by the wayside, as I am smack in the middle of month two of drastically cutting down my sugar intake. I'm not crazy: I still eat fruits that are full of natural sugar. Occasionally I'll drink juice (though I try not to, pressed juices exempt). I still use honey and sometimes raw sugar when I cook/bake, but never more than two teaspoons of sugar. I'm not going to pass up a Nature Valley crunchy granola bar, which is loaded with sugar. Like I said: not crazy. But I have stopped drinking my normal two hot chocolates per day. In fact, I haven't had a hot chocolate since June. 

I know you've picked up the phone to report a pod person/body snatcher. But it's OK, really. I'm fine. 

I won't say I'm ecstatic. I won't say that I don't miss my sweets (ode to the cookie. le sigh). But I do feel a tiny bit healthier. Because I have a specific type of anemia, it's hard (actually impossible) for my body to absorb B12 from the foods I eat alone. It's easy for my body to mix signals of "Eat some effing meat, systems are failing!" from my brain and switch them to "Energy is needed, so eat a cupcake! Yay sprinkles!" These days, however, because I've been truly restricting myself, I can tell when my body actually wants meat instead of sweets. That's reassuring. Because I had a first class ticket to Diabetes Island and that's not exactly somewhere I want to live. 

All of this to say that: I miss ice cream, but I don't want to fall into the habit of eating it all the time again. I read somewhere on some health nut site that you can make "ice cream" out of bananas. So I gave it a try and it wasn't half bad. I've tried once before, but I literally froze one banana, blended it and ate it. 

Spoiler alert: It tasted like a mushed frozen banana. If you're confused, that is not the same as ice cream. 

This time, learning from my mistakes, I sliced two over-ripe bananas and froze them overnight.


The next day I added about 1/2 cup of almond milk and another 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream (I never said it was healthy, just free from loads of sugar).



I blended these ingredients and BOOM. Impostor ice cream.

It's not the same as a strawberry shortcake from Braums but, hey, it will more than do for an ice cream fix when you need it. Considering it's as hot as a beach in hell today in Studio City, CA, I'm glad this project worked out in my favor. 

Give it a try, let me know how it goes!

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