Banana Ice Cream Pie

I may not be from the South but dang, I love the food, the tradition, and how everyone makes it a little different. A Southern classic is Banana Pudding, my grandma would make it with Nilla Wafers, Jello vanilla pudding, bananas, and good ole Cool Whip. Its delicious and I love it, but I wanted to make a little spin on it for the summer months, because it gets HOT here in Texas. Ice Cream is always a good choice to make it hawt weather friendly and you can get ice cream to suit pretty much any dietary requirement now. So I swapped the pudding for ice cream and used frozen bananas with a homemade crust for a treat everyone loved. It is super easy to get together and perfect for all these summer days ahead. I have found that a lot of people are more comfortable hanging out while outside so this is perfect for grill and chill nights with friends.

Banana Ice Cream Pie

• 50 vanilla wafer cookies (about 3 cups)

• 2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil

• 2 Tablespoons sugar or coconut sugar

• 3-4 bananas, sliced and frozen

• 1 pint vanilla ice cream of choice

• 8 oz tub of whipped topping, thawed in the fridge

- Preheat the oven to 350.

- In a storage bag or food processor, crush the cookies until they are a fine crumb. Move the crumbs to a pie dish or keep in the processor. Drizzle in the sugar and butter/oil while running or mix carefully in the pie dish. Press the mixture into a pie dish and create a crust, pressing up the sides as well.

- Bake the crust for 10 minutes and let cool completely. While that cools, thaw the ice cream until it is soft.

- Once the crust is cooled, place the frozen banana slices on the crust in an even layer. Then spread the ice cream over the top of the bananas, making it level. Use the remaining banana slices on the top of the ice cream. Finally spread the whipped topping and make it look pretty, crumble a couple extra cookies for the topping.

- Freeze the pie at least a couple hours before serving, let it sit out for about 10 minutes before slicing. Enjoy!

This is the cast of characters, I forgot to pull out the whipped topping and sugar but these are the main peeps. I have seen gluten free wafers at the store and we frequently buy dairy free ice cream, Nada Moo is our favorite brand (Texas company too!). Whipped topping can be Cool Whip or Coco-Whip for a cleaner version.

I like using my food processor for crumb crusts, I can crush it finely and drizzle in the butter or oil while it runs.

All crushed up and now I can put it on low speed and pour in the melted butter and sugar. Not too much sugar because the cookies are already sweet. Can’t find wafers, use whatever you have, I am sure crunchy chocolate chip cookies would be amazing, graham crackers are classic, or even an OREO would be a great choice.

Dump the crumbs into the pie dish - it should look like damp sand.

pressing it in with your hands is the best way to get it all level and up the sides.

This is what it should look like. Now get it in the oven.

While the crust cools, thaw the ice cream a little and pull out those frozen banana slices.

put an even layer of bananas in the bottom of the crust

use a spatula to spread the ice cream, take your time with this part.

get all the rest of those frozen bananas on top of the ice cream and grab your whipped topping.

spread the whipped topping on and you can crumble up some extra cookies for decoration. Put it in the freezer for a couple hours at a minimum and thaw for 10 minutes before slicing into it.