Banana Pecan Ice Cream

I finally did it. I went out and got an attachment for my stand mixer. It was a tough choice between the pasta maker or the ice cream maker. Weighing the pros and cons, I decided I'm happy enough making pasta by hand, but making ice cream by hand could be...well, a bit more difficult. Having made my first batch, I'm very pleased with the results!

After establishing that I was going to make ice cream, I threw the attachment bowl into the freezer for a few days while trying to find an excuse to go to the grocery store other than to buy a ton of cream. In the meantime, I tried to figure out what sort of ice cream I could make - classic vanilla like my mom used to make, something chocolaty, something daring? Then my roommate struck - he bought bananas in bulk and decided to store them in the freezer. I've shown him int he past what it'll do to a banana, when I make banana bread, but he just forgot I suppose. Anyways, now there's a bunch of bananas in our freezer, and I decided to make some banana bread (maybe tomorrow) and finally got the idea for a banana ice cream batter.

Recipe:
5 large (preferably over-ripe) bananas, frozen overnight and then thawed
1/2 lemon's juice
3/4 c. light corn syrup
1/2 T. vanilla extract
1 2/3 c. heavy cream
1 c. chopped pecans

Snip the end off the bananas and slop them into a bowl - they should come shooting out easily if you squeeze the banana from one end to the other like toothpaste. Add the lemon juice, corn syrup, vanilla extract, and cream. Find some sort of tool and smash it all up. It's fine if there's still chunks of banana, it gives the ice cream some nice variation.

Sure, it doesn't look like much at this point, but it'll get there. Hopefully if you're following this as a recipe, you'll have stored your ice cream attachment bowl in the freezer for at least a day...right? Good. While reading reviews on the attachment, I noted a lot of people just keep their bowls permanently in the freezer, because you never know when the urge comes to make a batch of good ice cream. I'm sure this recipe would work for any other ice cream maker as well, so just follow the maker's instructions.

Pour the batter into the ice cream attachment and stir until it is pretty thick. At this point, you can add the pecans. You don't want to add the pecans until the last few minutes (or any solids for that matter) because the force of gravity will just defeat the suspension you're hoping for.

After the ice cream has finished mixing, it'll be good to eat, BUT if you put it in some sort of storage and freeze it for a few hours, it'll have a better consistency. Unfortunately there was just a bit too much ice cream for the bowl I was trying to get it into, so I just had to eat a few spoonfuls. No, you don't get it, I had to. Otherwise it wouldn't fit. Don't judge me.

It ended up making a bit over one quart of ice cream. The chunks of pecan show up periodically, as do some leftover frozen bananas. I'm sort of wishing I had some sort of cake or something to serve this on top of, but this ice cream is definitely good enough by itself. Now if only I had an ice cream scoop so I could eat this in some civilized fashion...but oh well, time to dig in!