three wrongs don't make good ice cream.

Sebastian Joe's is a much-beloved ice cream shop in Minneapolis, once rumored to serve a honey-brown ale ice cream. My friends and I went there twice in May hoping to sample a scoop, but had to compromise with other flavors -- specifically, two called "Pavarotti" and "Immaculate Confection." Enter two VERY rights.

I wish I had written down the ingredients at the time I was slurping them up, but what I recall was a tasty togetheryness of banana, sweet cream, honey, candied ginger, chocolate chips, and some other sweet carby thing...cookie or graham cracker? I mean, I know you're supposed to enjoy the moment, but even as I was eating the stuff, I was pondering how to make it myself.

So, after a little more dreaming, some poking around online and letting a handful of bananas rot on our kitchen counter (thanks, Laura!), I was ready to take on the experiment.

Here's what I compiled as a recipe for the easy-to-describe

"Banana-Honey-Chocolate-Ginger-Oatmeal Cookie Ice Cream"

...or "Bananey Chinger," as I may call it from now on...if the recipe survives.

3 medium ripe bananas

1/3 c. dark brown sugar

1 1/2 c. whole milk

2 T. honey

1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. dark rum

big pinch of sea salt/kosher salt

1/2 c. chopped crystallized ginger

1/2 c. crushed oatmeal cookies

1/2 c. chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate bits

Three things to remember when you make this:

1) don't burn the bananas (and use the right amount of brown sugar, while you're at it)

2) use fresh whole milk

3) don't overdo the vanilla

These are all rules I will follow when I try again to make ice cream that doesn't taste funky. I secretly had hoped the flavor of scalded banana might both miraculously turn out delicious AND cover the tang of slightly-past-due milk (my main ingredient went bad in the time I was procrastinating). But that was wrong. And I thought vanilla could do no wrong, but I was...well...very much wrong again. It ended up tasting like alcoholic charred banana milk.

So, this is gonna take 2 pretty soon. The ice cream churner is already back in the freezer, getting ready for its next appearance. Hopefully the next batch will turn out tolerably.

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Recipe credits (not blame) go to:

David Lebovitz's Banana-Brown Sugar Ice Cream

Butter Sugar Flour's Roasted Banana Ice Cream (via David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop)

Reviewers at Food.com on Alton Brown's Banana Ice Cream recipe