Protein-Packed Healthy Banana Ice Cream with Sea Salt & Chocolate Chips

This healthy banana ice cream dessert can be made with just one ingredient – toss a frozen banana in a food processor and blend blend blend. This variation –Protein-Packed Healthy Banana Ice Cream with Sea Salt & Chocolate Chips — pumps up the protein & flavor for an extra special treat. 

I’m a big fan of made-up holidays. Valentine’s Day? Love it. (Really, I do.) National Ice Cream Day? Uh, sure, love it. So I celebrated it yesterday.

I don’t really need an excuse to eat ice cream, but I guess I needed an excuse to blog this recipe. I’ve been making it (or a variation of it) for years after discovering in college over 10 years ago (oh hey, that’s weird to type) and I’ve never blogged about it. Sorry about that. But hey – at least I gave you this chocolate superfudge brownie ice cream recipe a six years ago! That fixes things between us, right? Okay, cool.

Protein-Packed Healthy Banana Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

• 1 frozen banana
• 1/2 scoop vanilla protein powder
• 1 tablespoon almond butter or peanut butter (optional); I love Justin’s vanilla almond butter or creamy peanut butter in this!
• 2 tablespoons chocolate chips + extra for topping (chopped)
• 2-4 tablespoons almond milk
• Coarse sea salt

1. Combine the banana, protein powder, nut butter and 1 tablespoon almond milk in a mini food processor and pulse to combine. At this point, it will probably be really dry so add another tablespoon of milk and blend. The goal is to use as little milk as possible and rely on the banana to create creaminess. Be patient – it can take 1-2 minutes of blending to make the creamy texture. If it looks really dry, add a little milk at a time until it gets all creamy and delicious.
2. Once it’s super creamy, add the chocolate chips and pulse to break up the chocolate.
3. Put in a cute bowl (these are my favorite), and top with extra chocolate and sea salt.
4. Enjoy!

I find my mini food processor works best for this, but you can use a larger food processor or even a blender if that’s all you have. You may just need to scrap it down more often.

Ingredient Notes:

• Your banana should preferably be very ripe when you freeze it so you don’t need any extra sweetener
• I use the Trader Joe’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks, but any semi-sweet or dark chocolate works!
  • To be honest, I rarely top it with chopped chocolate. I just eat the chocolate that gets blended in. But it was looking pretty disgusting in photos without some stuff on top so I added that quick step. Extra chocolate for a photo never hurt anything.
• I used Vega Vanilla Protein Powder. The flavor will change based on which protein you use, and so will the amount of almond milk you need to add.
• It bears repeating – use as little milk as possible for the creamiest texture.
• I like pink himalayan sea salt. You can buy a himalayan sea salt grinder at Trader Joe’s too. See those cute little flecks of salt? Look closely. Seeeeee?

If you dig peppermint, you’ll like this 2 minute chocolate peppermint ice cream!

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? If we’re talking regular real ice cream (which I can’t really eat since I can’t tolerate diary), I love cookies & cream and strawberry. My favorite non-dairy options are the Ciao Bella Coconut Sorbet or any of the So Delicious Cashew Milk or Coconut Milk ice creams. They’re so dang good.