Banana soft serve y'all

The banana soft serve with chocolate chips and pretzels!

Why this recipe is automatic. It's systematic, it's hydromatic... it's grease lightening! Okay obviously it's not really grease lightening, but it is so exciting and wonderful that I would say the two are in the same category in terms of hype. What is it you ask? Why don't I just tell you the recipe I am speaking of. It's banana soft serve y'all!

I've been wanting to make a mock frozen yogurt/ ice cream recipe for a while now. My first introduction to it was a couple years back when I was having a slumber party with 5 adorable kids. One of them was lactose intolerant (like me) so his mother made him "banana ice cream" so he wouldn't be left out at dessert time with all the other kids. The mother told me it was just pureed bananas, I couldn't believe it. This was when I became obsessed with frozen banana chunks, which now I always have in stock in the freezer. Back to soft serve though. 

Last weekend I was finally motivated enough to make the soft serve when I scored  about 5 dozen overripe bananas from the fruit stand for 2 bucks. If you are considering using under ripe or just regular ripe bananas I assure you it's not the same and the end result may be very different. Overripe bananas are less starchy, more sugary and sweet, and the texture is softer, easier to puree. All of these make the banana a great candidate for the mock ice cream treat.

To get started, once you have the overripe bananas, you first cut the bananas into large chucks and stick them in the freezer. Then when they are hard you can mash them up or use a food processor to puree them into a consistency like soft serve. Once you are happy with the consistency, either pure smooth or still a bit chunky, you can eat it. Although depending on how long you are mashing/ processing you may need to stick it back into the freezer for a bit to harden. And that's it! Easy as that, you have your healthy banana dessert. 

But wait, there's more! I am Miss Piggy, thus I believe more is better. So I added additional ingredients to my soft serve as you can see below. But the bananas are all you really need to make the base, the soft serve itself. (Dare I say that the pretzels and the chocolate chips are just optional ingredients?) If you want you may like to add fun ingredients, i.e. crunchy bits and hidden goodies. I first added chocolate chips, but then realized that frozen chocolate chips really don't have a strong chocolaty flavor. Then I added lightly crunched up pretzels, and fell in love. The salty sweet crunch was more delicious than I could describe. I may experiment with adding peanut butter next  :)

My ingredients 

Final product 

Kombucha brewing

My Kombucha rules!
I tasted my plain flavored kombucha last night for the first time and was so delighted. It was acidic and refreshing, which is exactly what I love about kombucha. Can't you see the excitement on my face in this picture? I tried to capture it, but maybe it didn't come through as much as I hoped.
 I am have also brewed ginger, ginger pear, and peach raspberry kombuchas. I'm addicted!
 I would have never thought it was so easy to make, and so inexpensive. Typically each bottle at the store is at least $3, a scam considering the limited ingredient list and limited chef/ingredient interactions. It becomes a "set it and forget it" process once you have the scoby and kind of know what you are doing.
I found a great website that lists step by step instructions on how to start brewing.
http://www.paprikahead.com/2009/07/how-to-brew-your-own-kombucha-from.html
That's all I have to say now about my Kombucha. Wait, I repeat... It rules!