Creamy Banana Ice Cream with Nigella’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Sauce

Ok, so this recipe requires an extra bit of equipment, an ice cream maker. They are a fun bit of kit to have tucked in the back of the cupboard and they don’t have to cost a fortune. The inexpensive basic ones {like this one} have an insulated fast-freeze bowl, which you pop in the freezer for the day/overnight. After making the ice cream batter, you fit the frozen bowl to the machine and it churns and freezes it in a few super-fast minutes! The expensive machines, if you fancy a splurge, do the freezing and the churning without having to find space in the freezer for the bowl.

I should clarify now that I don’t have an ice cream maker stashed in the camper van. My freezer is so tiny I couldn’t fit the bowl in it if I did. The machine I used belongs to my sister-in-law, we have spent the week staying at their house looking after the pets while they were away on holiday, you met their puppy Stan in the last blog post.

The machine is only a small one so the recipe only makes enough for four small portions. If you have a bigger machine, the recipe can easily be multiplied.

To serve the ice cream I made a batch of Nigella’s rather superb Chocolate and Peanut Butter Sauce, this stuff will satisfy any peanut butter lover. Serve this sauce a little warm so that it melts into the ice cream and scatter it with chopped chocolate and honey roasted peanuts.

I loved the banana ice cream by itself, I made it with a custard base to make it wonderfully rich and creamy. I used light muscovado to sweeten the batter, it gives a lovely deep flavour, if you don’t have it regular sugar is fine. Mr VB could have eaten the sauce straight from the jar with a spoon.

Creamy Banana Ice Cream

freeze your ice-cream machine bowl in advance if your machine requires it,  follow manufacturers instructions. The ice cream batter needs to be chilled after preparing it so do factor this into your timings.

• 2 small, ripe bananas, mashed
• 200 ml { 4/5 cup } milk
• 2 free-range egg yolks
• 50 g { 4 & 1/2 tbsp } light muscovado sugar or caster sugar
• 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
• 125 ml { 1/2 cup } double cream {heavy cream}

Pop the milk into a pan and gently bring to the boil.

Into a medium sized bowl beat the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla until creamy.

Once the milk has boiled, pour it over the mixture and beat in.

Pour it back into the pan and bring back to the boil, stirring all the time. It should thicken a little. Take off the heat.

Stir in the mashed bananas and the cream. This will cool it down somewhat. Refrigerate until completely cold.

Once cold, add to your ice cream machine as per the manufacturer instructions. Churn until your desired ice cream consistency. You can achieve a stiffer ice cream if you prefer by transferring it to a container and popping it into the freezer for a few hours.

Now for some sauce

you can find Nigella’s original recipe on her website here.

• 100 ml { 2/5 cup } double cream {heavy cream}
• 50 g { 1/4 cup } smooth peanut butter
• 50 g { a scant 2 ounces } chopped milk chocolate
• 1 and 1/2 tbsp golden syrup {or corn syrup }

Place all of the ingredients into a pan and gently heat until melted together, after a minute or two the sauce will be ready to decant into a jar.

Serve it warm, poured over the ice cream.

Sprinkle your delicious banana chocolate peanut butter sundaes with chopped chocolate and chopped honey roasted peanuts.