Soft Serve "Ice Cream"

Sometimes I just need some yummy and creamy chocolate. This is filling and every mouthful is satisfying. Once there are frozen banana slices in the freezer, this two ingredient soft serve takes less than 5 minutes to make.

Chocolate Soft Serve made with frozen bananas and unsweetened cocoa powder

When my bananas are going south, I slice them up and throw them into zip top sandwich bags. I weigh 120 grams of banana slices for each bag. This is just to make figuring my nutritional count easier. It really doesn't matter how much banana is used in this recipe, so no need to weigh. I slice the bananas up, bag them, and throw the bags into the freezer. Actually, I don't throw them into the freezer, I HIDE them in the freezer. The hubby is grossed out by bags of frozen bananas.

This is perfect for overripe bananas. The older the banana, the sweeter the soft serve will be

Waa Ha Ha! I found a zip bag of banana slices that the hubby missed.
Although caked with ice crystals These banana slices will work just fine.

One word of caution: My 25 year old Cuisinart never complains at puréeing rock hard fruit but all food processors are not created equal. I have a friend who seized the motor of her name brand food processor under the strain of frozen bananas. Once I tried this in a bullet blender. I only tried it the one time because it broke the bullet blender.

However, I bought a small Proctor Silex brand food chopper in the grocery store for $9 and it works perfectly if just a little bit slower than my Cuisinart.

Throw the frozen banana slices into the machine. If desired after it has run for just a minute, add a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder.

There is a temptation to think: "This isn't working". Relax, be patient, it's worth the wait.

The machine might need to be turned off a couple of times to push and pack the bananas down so that the blade can whip them.

When everything is looking creamy and there are just one or two banana chunks rolling around get really excited, it is almost ready for a spoon.

Let the machine keep running until the bananas and cocoa are a smooth creamy consistency. Once there are no chunks it is ready to eat. It can also be frozen a bit in a small airtight container.

I like it fresh out of the machine. It is cold, creamy, yummy, and sweet.

Nutritional Information
120 grams of banana slices and 1 tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder:
Calories 120. Fat 1g, Carbohydrates 30g, Fiber 5g, Protein 2g.

This is creamy and there isn't a really strong banana taste. This really takes care of my chocolate fix.

Piña Colada

Frozen fruit whipped into a delicious dessert is one of my favorite things. Today I added dry instant pudding mix. The pudding mix does two things. First it adds a little sugar and flavor. Second it fluffs and adds some thickening to whatever frozen fruit it is combined with.

At one point I was using sugar-free fat-free pudding which I think is okay occasionally, but being a little afraid of artificial sweeteners and hating stevia and those kind of sweeteners the way I do, I decided on using the regular pudding mixes. Half a serving of regular pudding mix adds 1 PointPlus which is the same as a whole serving of the artificially sweetened pudding mixes. Yea!

My 25 year old Cuisinart never complains at puréeing rock hard fruit but all food processors are not created equal and a friend told me the motor of her name brand food processor seized under the strain of frozen bananas. Sad.

When I found out about this amazing "fruit ice cream" I couldn't believe it. I immediately searched YouTube and found a host of videos. It was like I won the lottery. One thing I noticed with all the people using a food processor to make this yummy stuff is that they had to stop the process a couple of times to scraped down the bowl and push and smooch the fruit down around the blades with a spatula. I found this to be true for myself, but I hated how hard it was to get the fruit smooched hard enough that the blades would whip it.

Tanner solved my problem. He cut a flexible plastic lid to fit in the Cuisinart and cut a hole in the middle for the handle of the blade to stick through. Now when the fruit is just hovering above the blade, I switch it off, open it up and push it down all around the blade. Because my new little tool is flexible I can give it a pinch and pull it out before I put the lid back on. I only have to do it once during the process. The spatula method took me two or three times.

Piña Colada Frozen Dessert
140 grams unsweetened frozen pineapple chunks
12 grams dry coconut cream pudding mix

Place the fruit in the bottom of the Cuisinart. Process until it becomes a frozen puréed creamy mixture. Add the pudding powder and pulse until incorporated.

Nutrition Information
Dole unsweetened frozen pineapple chunks 3/4 cup (140 grams): Fat 0g, Carbohydrates 19g, Fiber 2g, Protein 2g and PointsPlus 2*

Jello Pudding Coconut Cream Instant Pudding and Pie Filling 1/2 serving (12 grams): Fat 1.3, Carbs 10.5, Fiber 0, Protein 0 and PointsPlus 1

Entire Dessert PointsPlus 3

* WW deems fruit “free” but only allows 2 servings a day. I decided to track fruit the way I do everything else . This way I can have as much fruit as I want within points and still lose weight. WIN! Using the "free" fruit option would make this only 1 PointsPlus.

I keep and use my kitchen scale in inexpensive twist tie

bags to keep it gunk free.