This vegan banana ice cream is made with roasted bananas for a really decadent, ultra creamy ice cream that even non-vegans will totally love!
So you know that vegan banana ice cream that is made with frozen bananas in a food processor and is so simple and straightforward and only 1, or maybe 2, ingredients?
Well this is nothing like that!
This is a roasted banana ice cream that will blow your socks off. It’s more complicated for sure, but worth it.
If you want the super simple frozen bananas in a food processor version then check out our 2-ingredient peanut butter banana nice cream.
This roasted banana ice cream recipe was inspired by the book Artisan Ice Cream that I’ve been banging on about for a while now. It’s not a vegan book but does have a few vegan recipes. I love the method they use and adapted this recipe along with our vegan coffee ice cream recipe from the book.
How To Make Vegan Roasted Banana Ice Cream
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
Homemade Cashew Milk:
Add cashews to a bowl and pour over boiling water from the kettle. Leave that to soak for one hour.
After soaking for an hour, drain the cashews and then add them to a blender jug along with fresh cold water and blend very well until smooth and creamy.
Roasted Bananas:
Peel and slice 4 medium bananas and place the slices into a mixing bowl. Add melted vegan butter, light brown sugar and salt and toss the banana slices until well covered.
Spread the banana slices out onto a parchment lined baking tray and bake in the oven at 400°F for around 40 minutes until browned and caramelized.
Note: You can see below that the edges are burnt. Don’t worry about that, that’s just the excess liquid that has baked off and burned around the sides. The actual banana slices themselves are browned and caramelized to perfection and not burned at all, and when gently lifted off the parchment paper and placed into a bowl, they are totally perfect and ready for use in your ice cream.
Banana Ice Cream:
Add cashew milk along with some coconut milk to a mixing bowl and set aside.
Add white granulated sugar and water to a saucepan and let the sugar melt while stirring constantly. You’ll know your sugar is melted when your wooden spoon stops making a scratching noise at the bottom of the pot.
Add chopped cacao butter, coconut oil, salt and vanilla extract and whisk until melted in.
Then pour this mix out into the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut milk mix. Add the entire batch of roasted banana.
Blend with an immersion blender. If you don’t have an immersion blender then transfer to a regular blender and blend until smooth.
Place the whole mixing bowl in the freezer for around 15-20 minutes so that the mix becomes chilled. If it’s started to harden along the sides, then just stir it again so it’s all well mixed.
Churn it in your ice cream machine according to manufacturers instructions. We have a Cuisinart and it took around 30 minutes to get this to perfect soft serve consistency. In the last minute of churning, throw in some chopped walnuts.
Transfer to a loaf pan and smooth down with the back of a spoon. Cover and place into the freezer until completely set.
Recipe Tips
Homemade cashew milk and full fat coconut milk make up the base of this recipe. It’s important to use full fat ingredients here so you definitely need to make your own homemade cashew milk which is more like a cashew cream and you definitely need to use full fat canned coconut milk.
The mix of the two milks creates a neutral base so that you don’t taste coconut. Since a lot of people don’t like the taste of coconut this is really a plus!
Roasted banana intensifies the banana flavor so you don’t need to add any banana extract or anything like that, you have all the flavor you need.
Chopped walnuts are the cherry on top of this ice cream, they are the perfect flavor complement to the roasted banana flavor and the perfect texture contrast to the creamy and smooth ice cream.
Have everything ready to go before you start melting the sugar. Your milks must be ready in a mixing bowl, your roasted bananas ready to be added, the cacao butter must be chopped (so it melts in easily) and the coconut oil measured and ready to be added.
Once the sugar is melted, everything moves pretty fast, so if all your ingredients are ready to go, you’ll have a very smooth experience.
Make It Without An Ice Cream Maker
This ice cream mix is so tasty that if all you did was blend it and freeze it, it would still be super tasty!
But an ice cream machine is great to have because it incorporates air into the ice cream as it churns it, so while it’s freezing it, it’s also fluffing it up, creating that light and fluffy ice cream texture. It also helps to keep the ice crystals really small, so that you have a really smooth texture.
So if you’re going to make ice creams regularly then getting an ice cream maker would be a good investment.
However, you can ‘cheat’ it a bit. If you have a stand mixer, you can beat the ice cream mixture and then place it into the freezer, and then while it’s freezing (but before it’s frozen) you can bring it out and beat it again. This will most closely approximate what you would get using an ice cream machine.
Storing Instructions
Keep it stored in the freezer and consume ideally within 7 days for the best flavor and texture results.
More Vegan Ice Cream
- Cashew Ice Cream
- Vegan Avocado Ice Cream
- Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream
- Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream
- Vegan Coconut Ice Cream
- Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Banana Ice Cream
Ingredients
Homemade Cashew Milk:
- ⅔ cup Raw Cashews (100g) soaked in boiling water for 1 hour
- ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons Water (210ml)
Roasted Bananas:
- 4 Medium Bananas (~400g) peeled and sliced
- 2 Tablespoons Vegan Butter (30g) Melted
- 2 Tablespoons Light Brown Sugar
- ⅛ teaspoon Salt
Banana Ice Cream:
- 1 ½ cups Cashew Milk (360ml)
- 1 ½ cups Canned Coconut Milk (360ml) Full Fat, Unsweetened
- 1 cup White Granulated Sugar (200g)
- ¼ cup Water (60ml)
- ¾ cup Cacao Butter (100g) Chopped
- ½ cup Coconut Oil (110g)
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 Full Recipe Roasted Bananas as above
- ¾ cup Walnuts (75g) Chopped
Instructions
- At least the day before you want to make ice cream, make sure the bowl for your ice cream machine is placed into the freezer so that’s it’s ready to go the next day.
- Prepare your homemade cashew milk. Add the cashews to a bowl and then pour over boiling water and let them soak for 1 hour. Then drain the cashews and add them to the blender jug along with ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons fresh cold water and blend very well until completely blended in. You should not have to strain this milk at all. It should be totally smooth. Set aside.
- Prepare your roasted bananas. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
- Peel and slice 4 medium bananas and place the slices into a mixing bowl. Add the melted vegan butter, light brown sugar and salt and toss the banana slices until well coated.
- Spread the banana slices out onto a parchment lined baking tray and bake for around 40 minutes until browned and caramelized.
- Make your ice cream. Add the homemade cashew milk to a big bowl along with the coconut milk and set aside. Get all your other ingredients ready before proceeding.
- Add the white granulated sugar to a saucepan along with the quarter cup of water. Stir constantly until the sugar is melted. You’ll know it’s melted when the wooden spoon is no longer making a scratching sound along the bottom of the saucepan.
- Add chopped cacao butter, coconut oil, salt and vanilla and whisk in until everything is melted together.
- Then pour the melted sugar/cacao butter/coconut oil/vanilla/salt mix out into the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut milk. Add the full batch of roasted bananas.
- Use an immersion blender to blend everything together. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then transfer everything to your blender jug and blend it and then return it to the bowl.
- Take the whole bowl and place it into the freezer for 15-20 minutes so that the mixture gets chilled. When the mixture is chilled you might find that the mixture has started to harden along the sides, just stir it up well again and then pour it into the ice cream machine.
- Churn the ice cream according to the manufacturer directions until you reach a soft serve consistency. Depending on the ice cream machine you have this could be anything from 25-45 minutes. Add the chopped walnuts into the ice cream maker in the last minute of churning.
- Transfer to a loaf pan and smooth down with the back of a spoon, cover and place into the freezer to set completely.
Notes
- If your batch of cashew milk makes slightly more or slightly less than 1 and ½ cups (360ml), don’t worry about it and just use all of it in the ice cream.
- Prep time excludes time the spent soaking the cashews and the time spent chilling the mixture or for the ice cream to set completely in the freezer. It is for the hands on time, including churning.
- Recipe adapted from the book Artisan Ice Cream.
Just wow. This turned out better than even my attempts at homemade real dairy ice cream. The texture is perfectly creamy and not icy at all! The coconut flavor is also nicely masked by the cashew cream blend. I also used an allulose/monk fruit blend for sweetener instead of sugar to keep it sugar free, which resulted in a scoopable consistency straight out of the freezer. I will be making many flavors with this base, thank you for sharing this recipe!!! I seriously can’t say enough good things about it.
Thanks you so much for sharing and for your amazing review Nicki!
my only thought is that you didn’t cool the kitchen enough. all if these oils and fats are solid at room temp, so yours must gave been warm or not properly combined. I put mine in the blender, then freeze it four 6-8 hours, then put it in the food processor for the smooth ice cream texture and refreeze. works like a charm for those who don’t have an ice cream machine.
We are allergic to cashews. Is there a way to make this with just coconut cream?
Hi Erica, yes you absolutely can! You may taste the coconut flavor slightly though, but I don’t see that as a problem at all! 🙂
Hi,
This recipes sounds good. I’m not a vegan and I want to try vegan ice cream because it seems like dairy is not my best friend anymore (if you know what I mean) and I love ice cream and love to drink milk. Is there a certain store that sells vegan products? I live in Houston Tx and I’m not sure of where to find vegan butter and all other vegan products.
Hi Moni, if you have a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods anywhere nearby those are great places to get everything you can dream of! But even regular supermarkets should have non-dairy milk options and carry vegan butter like the brand ‘Earth Balance’. Since you’re in the USA you are very well placed for great availability of everything you want for a dairy-free lifestyle. 🙂
Hey Alison! I am about to make this. Is there any substitute you are aware of for cacao butter? Thanks! – John
Hi John, no substitute, but you can leave it out. The texture won’t be quite the same but it will still be delicious.
Thank you for the quick reply. I ended up getting off my butt and driving to whole foods and getting some any way. Fascinating stuff. I’ve also taken some notes out of the Flavor Thesaurus and added some clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon in small amounts. I can’t thank you enough for this recipe–it was exactly what we were looking for.
So happy to hear that John! Thanks so much for letting us know!
Can you carmelize the bananas in a skillet on the stove instead of roasting them. Would the sugar need to be reduced, since you’re adding sugar to carmelize the bananas
I’m not sure, you might be able to do it that way, but I’ve never tried it.
I cook my bananas on the stove top, and it probably wasn’t the same as baking but it did what it had to do! just be careful not to burn it, and keep the heat on the lower side when it looses water. My bananas were also frozen, so I had to reduce it a lot.
Can I replace with a different nut butter? almonds maybe?
Hi Molly, I assume you mean to replace the cacao butter? Cacao butter is actually a whole other thing and doesn’t have much in common with a nut butter. So in this case it wouldn’t work great as a sub. You can leave out the cacao butter though, it will affect the texture but it will still work fine. 🙂
Hi Alison, this recipe sounds delicious! I want to make it today but don’t know what to replace the cacao butter with – I don’t have that right away…
I made your reciepe, but after transfering it to churning machine oil started to separate from the rest of mixture. I had to throw out all thing. Why did it happened? What can I do next time to avoid it? Please give me some advice.
Hi Olivia, I have never heard of that happening. I have no idea what caused that. Did you substitute any ingredients?
Hi, thank you for replying.
The only thing I substituted is butter in ice-cream. I used normal one and despite homemade cashew milk, I used my coconut milk which I always use to make ice-cream.
I was very surprised because it was literally coconut oil because I tested it. Inside the banana cream after about half an hour of churning coconut oil lumps formed.
Why do you think that happened?
Hi Olivia, regular butter is not a substitute for cacao butter they are totally different things. This is what would have gone wrong in the recipe.
This sounds AWESOME! I will have to try making it. Question: How long before serving should I take it out of the freezer? I’ve made some ice creams that were as hard as a rock out of the freezer and took quite a while to get to a consistency that you could get an ice cream scoop through. Thanks (and your cats are adorable too! I read your About Me section).
Hi Ines, due to the cacao butter and coconut oil in this ice cream it doesn’t freeze that badly. So we had no issues scooping it straight out of the freezer, but we dip the ice cream scoop in hot water to warm it up and make scooping easier.
Thanks a lot for the great recipe! ????????But is it realistic to make this ice-cream without an ice-cream machine?????
Hi Evgenia, you could make this without an ice cream maker, though it would be less ideal. We added some tips to the post about how to do it. 🙂
Thank you for the answer and for adding of the special part???????? I understand that using the machine, I will get much more better results, but I haven’t got one yet and want to try the recipe at the same time????