Ice cream bananas, can be found effortlessly in Hawaii, as well as other tropical locations in Southeast Asia and Central America. Like its name propose, the ice cream banana is sweet with unquestionable taste of vanilla and its skin even come into sight frozen, starting out as a bluish-green color before it ripens. At its most mature stage, its texture is fluffier and creamier than the typical Chiquita you'll discover at the store, and they basically melt in your mouth.
As sinful as they sound, ice cream bananas don't have artificial sweeteners, flavors or additives. They're just born that way.
Ice cream bananas (also known as blue java bananas) may be a specialty fruit, but they aren't something latest. Farmers have been planting these sweet fruits in Hawaii since the early 1920s, according to Ken Love, executive director of Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers, and in other tropical regions for ages.
"There are over 100 types of bananas in Hawaii, all tasting different," Love told. "It's really the diversity that's interesting. And ice cream bananas aren't even the sweetest variety."
As he clarify on the website HawaiiFruit.net, banana plants mutate naturally, giving different bananas a variety of distinctive flavors and characteristics such as apple bananas (which have hints of sweet citrus) and the Mysore banana (which tastes like berries, according to one Hawaii grower).
The ice cream banana plant grows most excellent within zones 8 to 10 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones -- that is, most of California, the Midwest and the South. They flourish in constantly moist soil, but can handle hot and dry surroundings, as long as they are watered frequently and it doesn't drop below 20 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter.
Locally or self-grown bananas taste a whole lot sweeter than grocery story bananas, which are harvested before they're fully ripened.
The difference is you're getting bananas that are sweet and just picked off the tree, versus bananas that were harvested in Ecuador and ripened with ethylene gas in a container while en route to supermarket.
