Sugar Free Sunday--Fruit Smoothie/Dessert

Welcome to this week's edition of Sugar-Free Sunday!

Sorry I'm a bit late with it this week, but I've been getting ready to close up my house for the summer--sorting and packing, cleaning out the fridge, all of that fun (!) stuff--so that we can spend the summer in Georgia with my husband. I tried to get the post ready using dial-up internet, and I just could not get the pictures to load or the links to work, and today was my travel day--10 hours of driving, but we're here at last and ready to unpack and settle in---tomorrow!

Last week I saw Chaya's I Can't Believe It's Not Ice Cream dessert then found another similar recipe on Where;'s My Rolling Pin? called "Who Says You Need an Ice Cream Maker to Make Ice Cream?" So I was determined to try this out for myself.

Ingedients:

• 2 bananas (1 frozen, 1 plain)
• 8 fresh strawberries
• 8-9 frozen strawberries
• 1 c frozen blueberries

Put everything into the food processor, and blend away.

I started off with one frozen banana, and the fresh and frozen strawberries.

It blended well, but I didn't think it was very creamy, so I added a second, un-frozen banana.

Then I thought that maybe it wasn't "frozen" enough, so I added about a cup of frozen blueberries.

I never did get mine to ice-cream consistency, I guess I stopped too soon. (Re-reading Chaya's post, she processed her's an additional 10 minutes after it got to the sherbert-like stage, letting the motor "rest" every couple of minutes.) I did add just a bit of Splenda, (the amount would depend on the tartness of the fruit you use) and around a teaspoon of vanilla, just because. So just add and sample 'till it tastes good to you.

My son really liked this, he thought it was like a super-thick smoothie. I liked the taste of it, but the blueberries messed up the color, it looked kind of odd, but I'll be making this again, I'm determined to achieve that creamy ice-cream quality that Debbie and Chaya get from theirs, and hopefully it will look prettier next time, too!

So are you ready to link? Thanks to Chaya from Sweet and Savory for her recipe last week for Vietnamese Pancakes, as well as Denise Therese from Free to Feast for her Blackberry Thumbprint Cookies!

Until next time, good cooking, and good eating!