Vegan Chocolate Nice Cream

The best dessert is when you get the idea or craving, and within 5- to 10-ish minutes, that dessert is sitting in front of you, ready to devour. Am I right?

This is that dessert.

This is also the dessert that has minimal fat, no cholesterol, and fits into most eating plans. Score! Part of the trick is that is starts with frozen bananas, so there is no need for an ice cream maker, either.

I have another delish vegan ice cream on this site — Vegan Root Beer Coconut Ice Cream. If you’re keeping vegan, or even if you’re not, try that one too! 

Why is it called Vegan Chocolate “Nice Cream?” Because the body of it is banana rather than heavy cream or cream and eggs. It’s nice!

How to make Vegan Chocolate Nice Cream

Make sure you have the ingredients. For this recipe, you will need:

• Frozen banana
• Vanilla extract. Everything chocolate-flavored is that much better with a foundation of vanilla. And vanilla extract increases the perceived sweetness, which is a good thing in dessert. 
• Sea salt or table salt
• Unsweetened cocoa powder. This is NOT hot cocoa mix (which also has sugar and other things in it). This is dry, ground cocoa powder. It could be a common supermarket brand like Hershey’s, or a fancier higher-end version. Use what you like and what you have.
• Maple syrup. Use real maple syrup, not a bottle labeled “pancake syrup,” which is a syrup made from various sweeteners and maple flavoring

A day before, or at least several hours before, peel and slice the banana. Lay it out on waxed paper in the freezer until frozen solid.

When you’re ready to eat it as soft-serve, add the frozen banana, vanilla, salt and cocoa to the food processor. I’m using a Cuisinart mini food processor {affiliate link}, which I like a lot. I broke my big processor 5 years ago, and really all I use is the mini now. 

Add the maple syrup. 

Whirl everything in a mini food processor until it is smooth and well blended. It might take a minute or two until everything smoothes out. I usually press one button (chop) and then the next one (grind) in succession, since each reverses the blades, making sure you are chopping everything up efficiently. 

Eat your Vegan Chocolate Nice Cream immediately as soft-serve, or scoop into a storage container and freeze to make scoopable servings. I just used a plastic deli container to store it.

You should make this. You won’t be sorry! Serve with berries on top, or little shortbread cookies, or these tiny Just The Fun Part Waffle Cones!

And I apologize in advance if you feel the need to make Vegan Chocolate Nice Cream every day. Make a double batch (serves 2-4 with a double). Sorrynotsorry.