Murphy's Banana Ice-Cream with Chocolate Shavings

Now I am sure I didn't need any more dessert this weekend after the baked chocolate tart but I promised the husbag that I'd make him banana ice-cream with chocolate chips and being the perfect wife that I am I couldn't let him down!!! ;-) tee hee and a girl can never have too much chocoalte either!!

So last week Kieran posted the most gorgeous sounding banana ice-cream with chocolate shavings recipe and I just had to try it. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with bananas, sometimes I can't get enough of them and sometimes I won't touch them. I think it's all the little stringy bits to be honest and I prefer them slightly under ripe as the flavour is different to a really ripe one.

So anyway enough rambling about my relationship with bananas here's the recipe, I have changed the order of the ingredients to reflect the order I used them in and the original is available in the link above.

• 2 large bananas (the original recipe called for 3 but mine we MAHOOSIVE so I used 2)
  
• 15 ml (1 tablespoon) fresh lemon juice
  
• 130g sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 200 ml milk
• 240 ml cream
• 20 g good quality dark chocolate (I probably used a bit more as I threw in some extra chips once I had the first 20g in)

Combine the bananas with the lemon juice and blend or mash until smooth, I used a blender to make the bananas as smooth as possible cos the idea of lumps just doesn't do it for me but you might like your bananas a little lumpier.

Put the bananas in a small saucepan, add two tablespoons of sugar and cook over low heat, stirring all the time. Don’t over-cook them as once they're warm they should release a strong banana smell so you'll know then that's enough!

Beat the rest of the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale yellow.

Bring the milk to a low simmer in a small saucepan and then beat the milk into the eggs and sugar in a slow stream.

Put the mixture back into the saucepan and place over low heat. Stir continuously until the custard thickens slightly (around 65-70C) and coats the back of a spoon. Don’t over-heat the mixture because at around 76C you will scramble the eggs! I never use a thermometer for this part but if you have one then I'd say to use it cos it'll be much easier.

Mix in the bananas and transfer the custard into a small container, cover and put into the fridge until cool

Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks - don’t over-whip and fold the cream into the custard.

I have an ice-cream maker and very rarely use it as I'm just too lazy to put the bowl in the freezer overnight I guess. It's just as easy to stir every hour or so I find. But if you're using an ice-cream machine then put it in for about 15 mins and then put it in the freezer until it's solid

I used chocolate chips as I had some left over from christmas and mixed them in after 4 hours in the freezer.

This was the first ice-cream I've made with milk in it and it was lovely and light. Am definitely a fan of fresh banana ice-cream and will make this again.