"No stop signs, speed limit, nobody's gonna slow me down…"

I always start out with the best of intentions…I really do. But the road to hell is paved with them, and I’m pretty sure that’s the road I’m on, with no signs of a red light or a u-turn. A couple of weeks ago, some of my dearest Twittering food bloggers started a bit of an ice cream trend—a creamless ice cream trend. Actually, make that a creamless, eggless, sugarless ice cream trend. And rather than start my usual rants, I shut up, listened, and started turning my wheels. See, it turns out that if you freeze ripe bananas and then purée them in your food processor, what you get looks and tastes like a banana ice cream. Sure the fruit’s got a lot of natural sugar, but you end up saving yourself a shitload of calories by sparing your thunder thighs the rest of the goodies: cream, eggs and refined sugar. So I tried it. Froze a couple of bananas, puréed the puppies, tasted the result and smiled. This could work, I thought. This could be my salvation. This could be what gets me in a fucking bridesmaid dress for my sister’s wedding that isn’t the size of a circus tent, without having to live on rice cakes and….uhh…..more rice cakes. I stuck my new savior in the freezer and had some the next couple of days as my dessert. But salvation was short lived because I just can’t leave a good thing alone if it can go from good to great.

You know what tastes great with bananas? Chocolate. Yeah, chocolate tastes great with bananas. And rum. Dark rum is yummy with bananas. The angel on one shoulder was no doubt getting poked in the ass by the devil that sits on the other shoulder, and he was on the edge, losing his balance, and ready to fall off. And so this is where good intentions dead end, folks: banana/rum “ice cream” with Nutella chips. Adding the rum was not just a stroke of genius because it tasted great, but also because it kept the ice cream from becoming rock solid in the freezer. But then I thought of my favorite frozen treat, chocolate-covered frozen bananas, and thought well, how bad could a chocolate-covered frozen rum-soaked banana be?!? HMMMM?? So I spread a little Nutella on wax paper and froze it until it was hard enough that I could break it into small shards. Holy mother of Zeus was it good! And hey, at least I didn’t use bacon…..this time.

The next batch’s recipe has already been scratched out in my head: bananas with chocolate stout, a little maple syrup and yes, bacon. Peanut butter is of course always an option, but that’s too obvious an ingredient—I’ll leave it for the amateurs. Any other suggestions are welcome, but there is no formal complaint department here at Gonzo Gastronomy. So if this simple idea takes seed in your head and you wind up with your own concoctions, don’t come bitching to me. I told you to keep your eyes on the road.

Tagged as: bananas, ice cream