Trader Vic’s Book of Mexican Cooking (1973) – Helado de Platanos / Banana Ice Cream
Bergeron, Victor Jules. Trader Vic’s Book of Mexican Cooking. Garden City, NY: Doubleday &, 1973. P 235. Print. [TX716 .M4 847 1973]
By Raven Gonzales, an undergraduate nutrition student at UTSA
Helado de Plátanos / Banana Ice Cream
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2/3 cup light corn syrup
- 1/3 cup orange juice
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 1 1/2 cups lightly crushed ripe bananas
- 2 cups (1 large can) evaporated milk.
Combine the first 4 ingredients and stir well. Mix in the crushed bananas and let stand until sugar is dissolved. Add milk and blend well. Spoon mixture into freezing containers, cover, and keep frozen until ready to serve.
Makes 6 servings.
In the Kitchen:
To be honest, I think that anybody could make this recipe blindfolded because it is super easy! The ingredients are not difficult to find at any grocery store and unless you have a food allergy with bananas, you are in for a real treat. The recipe calls for ½ a cup of sugar and I made a mistake and thought it was 1 ½ cups of sugar so my ice cream came out super sweet, but it was still good. I ended up making a good mistake, but I would personally follow the directions and read them CAREFULLY!
My process in the kitchen was a little messy due to the light corn syrup because it is really sticky, so I suggest you do it in a small area so that you have a smaller mess to clean up. The directions are straight forward, there were no tricks to doing the recipe and the only tricky part was that you don’t have a picture in the book to compare to your own end-result. However, as long as the directions are followed properly it should come out well. I love bananas so I put more than what the recipe asked for, but that is up to you. If you love strawberry banana smoothies you will love this! And if you are tired of just banana smoothies this ice cream will become your best friend! I took pictures of all the steps I did for the recipe, but just a reminder one of the pictures has a lot of sugar…due to the fact that I put too much in, so don’t pay attention to the sugar proportion, just look at everything else.
I grew up with my own Mexican recipe for ice cream, but it is done differently and called quadritos. The only similarity between the two recipes is sugar, evaporated milk, and bananas. Everything else from this recipe is not present in mine. When I first started the banana ice cream recipe I was thinking, “Light corn syrup?” I personally didn’t know you could use that for ice cream, but then again I have never made ice cream besides my own. Either way this recipe has its own Mexican touch due to the evaporated milk.
This is a really great recipe to try for any occasion, but must be done a day in advance to fully freeze. I hope you enjoy the ice cream as much as I did!
Nice post … I would make sure you freeze in a shallow container so the mixture is the same thickness throughout. Makes for easier freezing. As a nutrition student, I wonder what other liquid sweeteners you could use instead of corn syrup – perhaps glucose or agave nectar? Also might be able to cut the amount of sugar in half if you use overripe bananas. That will change the color but would enhance the natural sweetness of the bananas.
Provecho! Elizabeth