A Different Banana Split

I was never a big fan of banana splits, probably because they were all about quantity and not about quality. The bananas were never ripe enough, the ice cream was always cheap stuff, and I'm not crazy about bananas drizzled with the traditional chocolate sauce.

The first thing I did here was make a crazy rich and flavorful ice cream. With something this rich, a little goes a long way. And the bananas were fully ripe and sliced into rounds instead of lengthwise. Much easier to eat that way.

I made the ice cream in a half-pint ice cream maker. Because of alcohol in the ice cream, it didn't set up very hard in the ice cream maker. It needed time in the freezer to harden a bit, but it still stayed nice and soft.

This ice cream might be a little strong to eat on its own because of the whiskey, but it worked well with the bananas - and no sauce needed. And because it packs such a punch of flavor, a little bit of ice cream was all I needed to go with one whole banana.

While I'm not fond of regular chocolate sauce with bananas, the white chocolate garnish was just right.

Banana Split with Irish Cream Ice Cream

For the ice cream:
1 1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup Irish whiskey

1/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt
For the banana split:
Bananas, as needed

White chocolate, for garnish

To make the ice cream:
Combine all the ingredients and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Freeze it in your ice cream maker, then transfer to a storage container and freeze until needed. It will be too soft right after churning, but will become solid enough to scoop nicely after freezing

To make the banana split:

Slice the bananas, and arrange them in a bowl with a scoop of the ice cream in the center.

For the garnish, shave white chocolate with a vegetable peeler.

Yum