Smoothies and nice-creams are sometimes used interchangeably, but they have a few differences. Nice-cream is a short-term for banana ice cream. It is predominantly made from ripe, frozen bananas that are blended in a blender or food processor to achieve an ice cream consistency. Blended frozen bananas are creamy and thick, which rivals the texture of ice cream. Smoothies on the other hand are made with any kind of frozen fruits, and there's an option to include a few frozen veg - you won't taste it, trust us!
Watch our instructor, Lol, in making the creamiest choc nice-cream ever:
Here are our top tips to making your very first nice-cream:
1. RIPE BANANAS
Ripe bananas ensure a sweet and creamy nice-cream. Get the spotty, and/or slightly brown ones. Chop them up into 1-2 inch slices, and freeze. If you like to make nice-creams regularly, you can portion them up into 1-2 servings. Place each bundle in a reusable bag, freeze, and simply chuck them all in a blender or food processor each morning.
2. USE A HIGH PERFORMANCE BLENDER OR FOOD PROCESSOR
As we have discussed in our previous article, How to Make a Smoothie Bowl, you will need a powerful blender to break down your slices of frozen bananas. Regular blenders will work, but you will need to add more liquid to help the blades to blend, thus resulting in a thinner consistency.
Here's how a nice-cream looks inside a blender. So creamy, silky, smooth and scoopable - just like how an ice cream should! And look - no lumps can be seen!
3. ADD YOUR FAVOURITE FLAVOURS & LIQUIDS
The popular nice-cream flavours are vanilla, chocolate and coconut. If you love vanilla, just add your vanilla paste or extract and add a dash of vanilla-flavoured plant milk.
Love chocolate? Add 1-2 tablespoons of cacao powder and a tiny splash of freshly brewed espresso. Espresso will help enhance the flavours of chocolate, and you won't taste it unless you add a large amount. Top with chocolate chunks or chocolate chips to make it even more chocolatey.
For coconut lovers, we suggest adding 1/8 - 1/4 cup of coconut milk or coconut cream. Serve coconut nice-cream with shredded coconut or coconut chips.
For sweeteners, you can use your favourite sweetener like maple syrup, coconut sugar or rice malt syrup.
These tips should make you more confident in making your very first nice-cream! Here are some easy recipes that we recommend you make first:
The base is a vanilla nice-cream with crumbled homemade brownies. Yum!
Coffee, dessert and breakfast all in one? Count us in! Start your day right with this delicious energy-boosting treat.