It’s slowly becoming ice cream season with lots of spring weather in New York this week. Plus sunshine and warmth in Miami today, I am so excited! For the longest time I’ve wanted to share a banana pudding recipe, but two reasons have always steered me off the banana pudding path. The first is that I don’t love the idea of using a boxed pudding mix. Most traditional, more retro recipes, use box pudding. If I do ever end up creating banana pudding, it needs to be SIMPLE. A boxed pudding mix would take care of that, but I just don’t love their ingredient list. So I’ll keep working on a solution. The second reason I have yet to share banana pudding is simple, I don’t want to simply recreate a recipe that’s already on the internet. But Easter is this Sunday! And I wanted to share a banana pudding type of dessert. And that’s when I thought, “Well, a banana ice cream cake could be really fun!”. I made this cake before heading out of town and I’ve been looking forward to sharing it ever since. I love this simple cake, and I love that it reminds me of my Nonnie and her 6 ingredient Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake. She’d make that ice cream cake all the time, especially for warm weather holidays or whenever we’d spend time with my grandparents in Florida. It’s still one of my family’s favorite cakes. I make it often too!
Here are some details
Start with the crust. A mix of salty crushed-up pretzels and Nilla wafer cookies, which are a staple in every banana pudding recipe. The crust is baked in a springform pan. At the same time, I bake a separate pan of crumbs up along with some honey. We’ll use these crumbs for sprinkling over the cake. Bake the crust and then let it cool so the cream doesn’t melt into the crust. Take a container of vanilla ice cream, I like the Tillamook old-fashioned vanilla. Then layer it onto the bottom of the crust. Add half of the toasted loose crumbs from earlier, and freeze. You only need to freeze this layer for 20 or so minutes. While that first layer freezes, mash a few ripe bananas and swirl them with vanilla, plus some honey. Mix in more vanilla ice and then take that banana-swirled ice cream and spread it out over the cake. Freeze again, but this time freeze until totally frozen!!
To finish the cake, layer with sliced bananas, cream, and then, the salty-sweet cookie crumbs! Slice and enjoy every last creamy, banana-filled bite. It’s sweet, heavy on the ice cream, swirled with banana, honey, and vanilla, and has just the right amount of salty cookie and pretzel crunch on the bottom. The perfect balance of sweet and salty that leaves you longing for another bite. It’s a real show-stopper! Looking for more ice cream cake recipes? Here are a few to try: Strawberry Pretzel Ice Cream Cake Coffee and Fudge Ice Cream Cake Swirled Berry Ice Cream Butter Cake Triple Layer Chocolate Fudge Ice cream Cake Nonnie’s 6 Ingredient Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake Lastly, if you make this Salty Pretzel Banana Pudding Ice Cream Cake Cake, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! Above all, I love to hear from you guys and always do my best to respond to each and every comment. And of course, if you do make this recipe, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram! Looking through the photos of recipes you all have made is my favorite!
