Chocolate Banana Ice Cream

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This healthy chocolate banana ice cream is made with frozen ripened bananas, dark chocolate, walnuts, and your choice of yogurt for an enticing treat that is great all year long! Creamy, soft, and naturally sweetened, this nice cream can easily be made into a vegan ice cream, and is full of natural fiber too!

We love to have any reason to celebrate with ice cream and light desserts, especially when there are healthy alternatives! In the summertime, I like to make mango nice cream, lemon bars with graham cracker crust, and this tasty gluten free tres leches cake because they’re suitable for almost any occasion.

But during the warmer months, there is nothing quite like diving into a bowl of freshly made, homemade chocolate banana ice cream. The flavor combinations that are created from the chocolate, banana slices, and walnuts are so satisfying and remind me of the most perfect sunny day.

The banana nice cream original recipe uses milk instead of yogurt. However, after experimenting, I think making banana ice cream with yogurt gives it better flavor and texture.

This is the most perfect and easy chocolate banana ice cream recipe out there, and we love to make it when we’re needing to satisfy a sweet tooth!

The best part about this simple recipe is that it’s a healthy alternative to ice cream and has no added sugar, so you can enjoy it completely guilt-free. It’s a great whole food sweet treat for kids – it’s actually one of our favorite healthy recipes for picky eaters!

This nice cream recipe tastes just like soft serve ice cream and has quickly become one of our favorite homemade ice cream recipes ever, and it’s the easiest way to enjoy a decadent treat that fits into a healthy lifestyle!

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👩🏽‍🍳 Why You’ll Love This Chocolate Banana Ice Cream

• Simple Ingredients: Have some super ripe bananas (spotty is best!) on your counter and don’t want to make banana bread? This 4-ingredient recipe requires items you might already have on hand!
• Kid Friendly: Kids will love this banana and chocolate ice cream. Have a picky two year old? This delicious and healthy ice cream tastes, looks, and smells like a total treat.
• Healthy And Diet-Friendly: This chocolate banana nice cream recipe is naturally sweetened, so it’s a sensible and healthy treat if you’re watching your calories or just looking for healthier desserts. Swap the yogurt for low fat yogurt or almond milk to make it a low-fat treat too!
• No Ice Cream Maker Needed: You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker that hogs the countertop for this banana chocolate ice cream recipe! Just blitz it all up in your food processor or high speed blender and enjoy immediately for soft serve consistency or freeze to make it firmer.

🥘 Ingredients

This frozen banana chocolate ice cream is loaded with good things, combining a handful of natural ingredients into a super creamy sweet treat. See the recipe card at the bottom of the post for nutritional information.

• Sliced Frozen Bananas: These are the main ingredient in this healthy ice cream. To make things earlier, cut your fresh bananas into slices prior to freezing them (do not try to make nice cream with room temperature bananas). Bananas have a natural sweetness that make a great base for this recipe. For the sweetest ice cream possible, use overripe bananas (with spotty or brown skin). Bananas are naturally high in potassium and fiber giving this nice cream lots of nutrients.
• Yogurt: This recipe calls for Organic Plain Greek Yogurt, but any type of yogurt will work. 
• Chocolate: Dark chocolate chips are blended to create additional rich textures in the ice cream.
• Walnuts: You can find walnuts in any bulk food section at the grocery store or even online. Walnuts naturally lower cholesterol, contain natural antioxidants and polyunsaturated natural fats and are also believed to have anti-inflammatory benefits.
• Optional Add Ins: Frozen berries, pecans, a little bit of cinnamon, peanut butter or almond butter, a little bit of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, coconut flakes, etc. You can add unsweetened cocoa powder or raw cacao powder if you want a more chocolatey nice cream. The sky is truly the limit here! If you need a sweeter ice cream that’s more like dessert or to cover up banana taste, you can use a touch of maple syrup, honey, or agave (but keep in mind, this will increase the sugar content of this creamy ice cream recipe!)

🍲 Ingredient Substitutions

• Whole Frozen Bananas: Try frozen avocado or coconut chunks for another great base if you don’t want to use bananas or don’t like banana flavor. Mangos also work, but they are not as starchy or creamy as the banana and they don’t have fat (which the avocado and coconut chunks do), so it will be more like a sorbet.
• Yogurt: Any type of yogurt will work such as coconut or almond (making this a vegan recipe). If you want this nice cream to have a decent amount of protein, then make sure to use a yogurt with a higher protein content. Cottage cheese will work too. You can also use a plant based milk (like unsweetened almond milk) instead of yogurt; ¼ cup milk of choice will work here! This is our healthy swap for heavy cream in this recipe.
• Chocolate: If you don’t have chocolate chips, then you can chop a chocolate bar into small pieces, use unsweetened cocoa powder, or try healthy alternatives like cocoa nibs or raw cacao nibs. If you want your banana chocolate nice cream to have no added sugar or refined sugar, raw cacao nibs are a great choice. You can also use white chocolate for a sweeter, more indulgent recipe.
• Walnuts: Other nuts like pecans, peanuts, or cashews will work if you can’t have walnuts. If you can’t have nuts at all, try raw sunflower seeds or raw pumpkin seeds.

🔪 How To Make Chocolate Banana Ice Cream

If this is your first time trying to make your own nice cream with yogurt, I promise you are going to love it! I love simple recipes and this banana and chocolate ice cream recipe is definitely one of them. Get your spoons and bowls ready and let’s make this healthy banana ice cream:

Break Up The Frozen Bananas: First, place the frozen sliced bananas in the bowl of a food processor or high-powered blender. Pulse.

Add The Yogurt: Add the yogurt and blend until the mixture is smooth and has a creamy texture. 

Add The Chocolate And Nuts: Finally, add the dark chocolate chips and walnuts.

Serve Or Freeze: Finally, serve the nice cream with chocolate immediately (to have a soft serve ice cream consistency) and top with a few more dark chocolate chips, walnuts, and even fresh banana slices if you wish. Alternatively, place in the freezer for 30-60 minutes for more of a traditional ice cream consistency.

💭 Expert Tips

• Use A Regular Blender: If you don’t have a food processor or a high powered blender, you can still make nice cream with a regular blender. Use the highest speed and stop and scrape down the sides often and keep blending. Or you can add a little almond milk (or milk of your choice) to get it to blend, which will make the overall consistency a little softer. At that point you can still place it in the freezer to firm up a little bit.
• Slightly Overripe Bananas Are Best: Use fully ripened bananas (with brown or spotted skin) for the sweetest possible flavor.
• The Best Way To Freeze Bananas: Freeze the banana slices in the single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper for at least a couple hours (preferably overnight) prior to blending them! If you’re planning to make a big batch of frozen bananas to use for later, I recommend storing the frozen banana slices in a freezer bag or airtight freezer safe container until you’re ready to use them.
• Increase The Recipe: If you need to make a bigger batch of banana and yogurt ice cream, then feel free to double or triple the recipe!

📖 Variations 

• Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream: Just add a touch of mint extract or use mint chocolate chips instead of regular chocolate.
• Peanut Butter Banana Ice Cream: Add in some peanut butter swirls by adding a few small spoonfuls of creamy peanut butter and then briefly blending.
• PB&J: Mix in 1–2 tablespoons of peanut butter, and instead of the chocolate, use fresh strawberries.
• Nutella Ice Cream: Add in some homemade vegan nutella swirls by adding a few spoonfuls and then briefly blending.
• Pina Colada: Use ¼ cup full fat coconut milk instead of yogurt, and use pineapple chunks instead of chocolate chips!
• Banana Greek Yogurt Ice Cream: Use Greek yogurt in place of the regular yogurt in this recipe for more protein. If you’re interested in a banana yogurt ice cream with no chocolate or walnuts, simply leave those out.
• Chocolate Banana Frozen Yogurt: For more of a banana frozen yogurt recipe, try swapping out more of the banana for yogurt. This will give the banana chocolate frozen yogurt an even creamier texture, but you may need to add more sweetener (like maple syrup, honey, or agave).

🍽 Serving Suggestions

You can serve this banana nice cream any way you like. Here are a few of my favorite toppings and flavor combinations:

• More dark chocolate chips
• More walnut pieces or other nuts like chopped pecans or almonds
• Fresh berries or frozen berries
• Fresh banana slices or caramelized bananas
• Coconut flakes
• A little bit of slightly warmed nut butter
• A sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg and a pinch of salt
• Your favorite chocolate syrup with no refined sugar
• Sprinkles would be great for kids!

🙌 Dietary Adaptations

• Gluten-Free Option: This recipe is already naturally gluten-free, just make sure the chocolate chips are certified gluten-free.
• Vegan Option: It’s very easy to make vegan chocolate banana ice cream! Instead of Greek yogurt, use a plant-based yogurt. Alternatively, you can use 1/4 cup of any plant based milk of your choice!

🫙 Storage Directions

Here is how to store and keep this chocolate and banana ice cream:

• Freezing: If you’re not serving the ice cream right away, and you plan to freeze and store in a freezer safe airtight container or transfer the ice cream to a loaf pan lined with parchment (make sure to cover it well) for up to 4 months.
• Defrosting: Let the ice cream thaw on the counter until it is scoopable. Then you can scoop it just like real ice cream!

Recipe FAQs

🍌 More Banana Recipes And Healthy Desserts!

• Banana Bread Without Butter
• Caramel Nice Cream
• Bananas And Cream Oatmeal
• Vegan Tofu Ice Cream
• Banana Popsicles
• Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Milkshake
• Lychee Ice Cream
• Flaxseed Pudding
• Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
• Coconut Milkshake
• Low Sugar Desserts

📋 Recipe Card