A few weeks ago I accidentally bought a gallon of milk when we already had over a gallon in the fridge! Yikes. It was pretty crowded in there so I thought there was no better way to get rid of all that extra milk than to make us some ice cream. This recipe for peanut butter cup ice cream from Recipe Girl seemed like it would really hit the spot.
Hmmm...but I had a lot of other things that I wanted to use up. Like frozen bananas and strawberry freezer jam that never set up properly. (Man do I ever have lots of that stuff.) But jelly goes well with peanut butter. And Elvis teaches us bananas go well with peanut butter too. So why not do both!
My husband proclaimed that this is the most disgusting looking ice cream ever. Of course he redeemed himself by saying it was also the best tasting ice cream ever. It really was! (Gross looking and super duper yummy.) And this coming from the man who has repeatedly said he doesn't care for peanut butter desserts. (Maybe I shouldn't listen to him when he says stuff like that cause I know what I'm talking about when it comes to desserts. If I know one thing, it's the goodness of desserts. Yeah!)
Anyhow, back on track! I didn't use any cream, just 100% skim milk. There is so much sugar and other things going on, no one missed the cream. If you are super picky about the texture of the ice cream, by all means, use a more fatty filled cow based mammary glad liquid product.
As we had lots of little bunny shaped peanut butter "cups" left over from the Easter bunny, I chopped those little suckers up and used them instead of the traditional Reece's PB cups. I probably had a little too much fun mutilating the peanut butter bunnies. It was a good thing that no one else was home to hear my maniacal laughter. (It's the little things that get me through the day.) Unfortunately, I was about 1/8c shy of the required amount of pb cups. So, I did the next best thing and chopped up a Hershey bar that I had leftover from when I made S'more Cookies last month. They did the trick quite nicely.
I can't decide if I like this peanut butter ice cream, or the chocolate peanut butter swirl Ice Cream I made last year. While they are both peanut butter ice creams, they are so different. This one has peanut butter flavored ice cream with chocolatey peanut butter bits, while the other one is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter blobs. They might seem like they should taste the same, but they are really so different. I suggest you make both and decide for yourself!
Hunka Chunka Freezin Love - PB Banana Ice Cream with Mutilated Peanut butter cup bunnies and Strawberry jelly swirl adapted from Recipe girl
1 1/4 c creamy peanut butter
3/4 c sugar
1 large very ripe banana
3 1/4 c milk (or 1 1/4c milk and 2 c cream)
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2c chopped pb cups (or bunnies if you are into that sort of thing)
strawberry jelly/syrup (if you use jelly nuke it until it is melted and liquidy - about 30 sec or so)
With a mixer, combine peanut butter, sugar and mashed banana until smooth. Slowly add in 1 c of milk. Mix on low for 2 minutes until sugar is fully dissolved and no longer grainy. Add the remainder of the milk and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Pour into your ice cream maker and prepare as suggested by the manufacturer. It will probably take about 25-30 minutes. I tried to add my pb cups at the last 5 minutes of blending, but my ice cream maker didn't like that, so I poured the ice cream into a shallow freezer safe container and then stirred in my pb cups. Once the pb cups were evenly distributed, I added in a few swirls of strawberry syrup. I eyeballed this so I'm not certain of the amount I used. It was probably somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 c. At this point the ice cream will be very soft. It is best after it sits in the freezer for 3-5 hours. If you should have leftovers at this point, be advised that the ice cream will be diamond hard. I usually leave the ice cream on the counter while we are eating dinner and it is scoop-able by the time we are done.
Very creative!
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