This recipe was provided to Taste of Home (https://www.tasteofhome.com) by Caroline Wamelink of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Bless her. ToH is a goldmine for (usually) relatively simple recipes from across these great lands of ours, because often Canadians are enthusiastic contributors, too. I was doubly pleased to stumble upon this because I have been to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, not once but twice. It is lovely.
I have only adapted this slightly because Caroline was making 16 servings (she probably has loads of family and friends, who are all hearty Midwestern eaters) and it was just me and the Better Half so I reduced the amounts. Faithful Hound got a little of the ice cream in a separate bowl. To compensate for the 8×8 dish I was using (Carrie’s original calls for a 13×9) I switched up the original chocolate chip ice cream with one layer of vanilla ice cream and one layer of chocolate. If any supermarket near me sold Neapolitan ice cream I would have just used that throughout.
Plus I tried to remember the banana splits of my childhood, consumed at the lunch counter of a Woolworth’s seemingly right after FDR was elected to his second term.
Warning: Because of the freezing stages this ultimately takes a while but the assembly is really quick.
Ingredients
1/2 package (about 6 ounces for this) vanilla wafers, crushed
4 tbsp butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar
4 scoops (2 cups) chocolate ice cream, softened
4 scoops (2 cups) vanilla ice cream, softened
2 large firm bananas, sliced lengthwise
1 jar (11-3/4 ounces) hot fudge ice cream topping, divided
6 scoops (3 cups) strawberry or cherry ice cream, softened
Redi-Wip™ topping, maraschino cherries, diced pineapple chunks, and lightly crushed almonds (so not almond crumbs) for the toppings. The toppings are what make the dessert sing.
How To
In a bowl, mix wafer crumbs, melted butter and sugar; press onto bottom of an 8×8 dish. (Slightly smaller would be even better. You could even make this in a loaf pan.) Freeze 15 minutes.
Spread chocolate ice cream over crust. Then layer on the vanilla. Layer with bananas and 3/4 of the jar of fudge topping (about 3/4 cup). Freeze, covered, at least 30 minutes.
Spread strawberry or cherry ice cream over top. Freeze, covered, 6 hours or overnight.
Remove from freezer 10 minutes before cutting. Warm remaining fudge topping; drizzle over top. Serve with toppings as desired.
And desire them you will! First, make a festive alpine landscape with the Redi-Wip™. Plop a maraschino cherry here and there, for fun. Throw on the pineapple chunks with abandon, but try to get the smallest you can find. Then, sprinkle over the almonds so the whole extravaganza is covered.
The good thing about this dessert is that if you have the freezer space this will last for a long time if you cover it. If you don’t think you’ll eat the whole thing at one sitting, cut out how much you want and only add the pineapple chunks and the maraschino cherries to individual servings, don’t do the whole thing. No one wants to bite down on a 4-day-old frozen pineapple chunk.
[On a very personal note: In scheduling this I realize I have slotted it in on my beloved late grandmother’s birthday. She was sometimes my sole dining companion at the lunch counter. Some of my happiest memories.]
Happy birthday to your dear late grandmother; my the good memories be a blessing.
I also spent a fair amount of time at the lunch counter with my grandma. She used to take me to Woolworths and treat me.
We used to go to a Woolworth’s too but there were a couple of other haunts. People complain about how chain-ridden Manhattan is but when I showed (mumbles number of years) ago there was a legendary Howard Johnson’s right in Times Square and a large Woolworth’s at the base of the Empire State Building. That Woolworth’s had a classic S-shape lunch counter (so it looked like a bunch of linked “s”‘s on their side) and the rudest, nastiest waitresses who, like the lunch counter, probably hailed from the WWII era. No one complained about them and lots of people (me) miss them. There was a time when you could get off the subway and walk past another Woolworth’s and down to the South Street Seaport, where you would find the country’s only J. Crew retail store.
Those were the days…
Aww, love the story about your grandmother. I bet she was a neat lady.
She was. She spoiled me rotten. She (my father’s mother) and my mother (so her daughter-in-law) didn’t get along very well, so in her subtle psy-ops way we’d be talking over our banana splits and I’d tell her something and she’d say (she said this more than once), “I don’t know why your mother would feel that way. I know your father drinks but has your mother taken it up too?” I was maybe 7 the first time she introduced this topic. Ironically, my mother most certainly did not drink, partly because of her background and upbringing, and partly out of a…I don’t know, allergy to alcohol or something.