Let’s kick off the fruity berry season with our healthy 3-ingredient Matcha Strawberry Nice Cream Cups! Creamy frozen banana ice cream is infused with antioxidant rich matcha (green tea), swirled with fresh strawberries, and topped with a homemade coconut whipped cream. With just 5 minutes of prep and no churning, you can enjoy a guilt-free vegan Japanese dessert without any added sugar.
Yep! It’s so healthy that you can eat it for breakfast. You get that little kick of caffeine from the matcha, healthy fruits and boost of energy to power through your day. This easy matcha dessert is thick and creamy like regular ice cream but it’s made with blended frozen bananas instead of cream and sugar.
If you love soft serve ice cream, you’ll love diving into this green tea ice cream straight from the food processor by the spoonful. Alternatively, you can freeze it for a couple of hours for a scoopable dessert. The choice is yours, but we won’t judge!
Want an extra special treat? Try this matcha ice cream recipe with a crispy strawberry jam roll cookie or a drizzle of magic chocolate shell.
Jump to:
What You Need To Make Vegan Matcha Ice Cream
Equipment - A food processor works the best and is the key to making banana ice cream in a flash. You can also use a high-powered blender, but it must be powerful. We used a Ninja all-in-one 1500-watt blender and food processor for this recipe.
3 Easy Ingredients
- Frozen bananas
- Matcha green tea
- Strawberries
Frozen Bananas
4 medium sized ripe bananas are needed to get a full-sized food processor moving. If you have a mini food processor you can usually get away with 1 to 2 bananas. When you have more bananas than you can eat, peel them, chop them and freeze them to make black sesame nice cream, smoothies, and mocha banana ice cream.
Matcha Green Tea
Living in Japan opened our eyes to the incredible world of matcha, making us true enthusiasts. We have been enjoying matcha drinks and eating matcha pancakes, brownies, and crispy truffles long before they became popular in the USA. Ever since we discovered the way of tea with traditional matcha tea ceremonies (chadō), we may have become matcha snobs. (smiling)
Japanese matcha is the special ingredient that takes this banana ice cream to the next level. The combination of earthy, smooth, vegetal, and slightly sweet matcha green tea with frozen bananas and floral, sweet, and sour strawberries is simply sublime. As HUGE matcha lovers, we like to add one heaping teaspoon of green tea powder for each frozen banana.
Currently, we’re enjoying the smooth and pure taste of Japanese Ceremonial Matcha First Harvest Organic Green Tea from Fraser Tea. For those new to matcha or looking to make delicious matcha lattes, Fraser Tea’s Matcha Organic Green Tea is a fantastic budget friendly option. Plus, all Fraser Tea Products are USDA Organic, kosher, and it’s a family-owned right in Michigan, USA.
Fresh Strawberries
You won’t believe how delicious matcha and strawberries are together! When you take a scoop of the creamy matcha nice cream with a sliced strawberry together, it’s like a match made in heaven. You can certainly add a few frozen strawberries, other seasonal berries or skip it all together.
How to Make Matcha Banana Ice Cream?
- Sift the matcha powder
- Add frozen chopped bananas to a food processor or high-powered blender.
- Pulse until frozen bananas looks like rough sand.
- Add matcha green tea.
- Scrape down the sides of the food processor and continue pulsing.
- Switch to blending. Blend until smooth stopping to scrape down the sides of the food processor as needed.
- Enjoy as a soft serve straight away or transfer into a freezer safe pan, cover and freeze for 2 to 3 hours for a firmer scoopable ice cream.
Assembling Dessert Cups
- Layer the sliced strawberries in a dessert cup or glass.
- Add the prepared matcha banana ice cream.
- Top with coconut whipped topping and more berries as desired.
Recipe Tips
- Use ripened bananas for the sweetest ice cream. A few brown spots are a very good thing – it means that they are extra sweet. Perfect for ice cream or our eggless marbled chocolate peanut butter banana bread.
- Bananas should be completely frozen solid before placing them in the food processor.
- Add matcha per your desired taste preference. We used one heaping teaspoon full for each banana. It’s easier to start out with less and add more after tasting the ice cream.
Food Processor Hacks
- If you have a small mini food chopper (2-5 cups) you can usually get away with 1 to 2 bananas for the blade to run smoothly.
- On the other hand, if you have a 6-9 cup capacity food processor, you will need at least 3-4 bananas to get the blade going.
- Gently pulse the food processor a few times until it turns to the textured sand consistency. Be patient.
- Stop and scrape down the sides a few times to get it going.
- The magic happens as the food processor blades warm lightly. You will notice changes from a dark course green color to a vibrant lighter green, smooth and creamy.
- You should not need to add any non-dairy or dairy to get the banana ice cream mixture to blend until smooth. However, if it is not getting creamy after 3 to 4 times scraping down the sides, you can add a teaspoon of non-dairy or dairy of choice at a time until it does.
Got Leftovers?
Store your leftover matcha strawberry nice cream in an airtight container in the freezer. If you freeze the matcha nice cream longer than 2 hours, you will need to leave it sit for 5 to 10 minutes at room temperature to make it scoopable.
Fun Treat - Chop and mix fresh strawberries into the leftover matcha nice cream. Pour or spoon into a popsicle mold and freeze for another day.
Things to Note
- Matcha Strawberry Nice Cream Cups are freshest when enjoyed straight away or on the same day after freezing for a couple of hours.
- If left at room temperature, the banana nice cream will start to oxidize and of course melt. This will change the color from a pretty bright green matcha to a duller browner matcha ice cream. It still tastes delicious but just not as pretty.
- Always sift matcha before using in a recipe. All matcha, even the highest quality ones, will have clumps. This ensures that the matcha will be infused throughout the banana ice cream.
- If serving for company, we are all about making the matcha nice cream in advance and allowing it to freeze for a couple of hours covered. Then, all you need to do is scoop it into dishes and garnish with strawberries when your guests are ready for a healthy treat.
More Healthy Frozen Treats
Did You Like Our Recipe? Leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and/or a review in the comments section below. Your feedback is always appreciated! Follow us for more delicious recipes on Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook! Don't forget to sign up for our email list for more free recipes.
Matcha Strawberry Nice Cream Cups
Equipment
- food processor or high powered blender
Ingredients
- 1 cup strawberries
sliced - 4 bananas
(frozen and sliced) - 4 teaspoons matcha (green tea) - adjust amount for your desired taste preference.
Toppings (Optional)
Instructions
- Slice your strawberries and line up the strawberries on the bottom and sides of your dessert cups.
- Sift matcha and set aside.
- Place frozen sliced bananas in the food processor. Pulse in food processor until it looks like finely ground sand. (See Notes)
- Add matcha green tea to the frozen banana mixture. Stop the food processor 2 to 3 times to scrape down the sides as needed.
- Switch to blending mode on food processor. Keep blending until the frozen bananas and matcha turn from granules of sand into a smooth and creamy soft serve ice cream consistency. You will know you are getting close as the frozen bananas will turn from a dark green to a lighter green color. (See Notes for Recipe Tips)
- For a soft serve ice cream texture, immediately scoop the matcha banana ice-cream on top of your strawberries in the dessert cup and enjoy.
- If you prefer a more scoopable ice cream texture, transfer the matcha nice cream to a covered freezer safe container for 2 to 3 hours. When you are ready to enjoy, scoop the matcha banana ice cream into a cup with strawberries.
- Garnish with coconut whipped cream or non-dairy whipped topping. Enjoy!
Video
Notes
- Use a food processor or high-powered blender for best results.
- Add matcha per your desired taste preference. We used one heaping teaspoon full for each banana. It’s easier to start out with less and add more after tasting the ice cream.
- If you have a small mini food chopper (2-5 cups) you can usually get away with 1 to 2 bananas for the blade to run smoothly.
- On the other hand, if you have a 6-9 cup capacity food processor, you will need at least 3-4 bananas to get the blade going.
- Gently pulse the food processor a few times until it turns to the textured sand consistency. Be patient.
- Stop and scrape down the sides a few times to get it going.
- Then, change the food processor setting to blend. This was the smoothie/frozen drink button on our Ninja food processor.
- The magic happens as the food processor blades warm lightly. You will notice changes from a dark course green color to a vibrant lighter green, smooth and creamy.
- You should not need to add any non-dairy or dairy to get the banana ice cream mixture to blend until smooth. However, if it is not getting creamy after 3 to 4 times scraping down the sides, you can add 1 teaspoon of non-dairy or dairy of choice or even water at a time until it does.
Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
There is more than one way to freeze bananas. Here are 2 ways to choose from…
Option 1: Lazy man version
First peel the bananas and then throw them in a freezer safe bag or sealed container straight away. You will have to chop the frozen bananas with a clever before using and sometimes they stick together. All in all, we find this the easiest method. By freezing the bananas whole, you know how much to add to your recipe.
Option 2: Sophisticated version that requires some freezer space.
Remove the banana peel. Chop the bananas in bite sized pieces. Freeze bananas on a lined baking sheet in a single layer for a couple of hours or until frozen solid. Then transfer the frozen bananas to a covered freezer safe storage container. The con of this method is that you don’t really know unless you have a scale how many slices are in a banana, especially if you have frozen more than one.
First and foremost, both matcha and regular steeped green tea come from the same tea plant called Camellia sinensis. But that is where their similarity ends.
What makes matcha different from regular green tea is how the tea plants are covered during the last few weeks before harvest. Covering the tea plants, helps to increase the bright green chlorophyll and it also increases the antioxidants and nutrients. Then, the entire leaf gets stone ground into a green tea powder. Matcha can be consumed as a beverage, enjoyed in a chia seed pudding, mixed into desserts, added to savory recipes and more.
Can guess the benefits of covering the tea plants? Yep – you reap all the benefits of extra antioxidants, including L- theanine that promotes relaxation along with the caffeine kick for a “chilled buzz” or “focused energy”. Because you are consuming the whole leaf in a ground powder, matcha has a more intense flavor, caffeine, and higher nutrient count compared to regular green tea.
Regular green tea leaves are not covered during the last few weeks before harvest and they go through different processing. Basic green tea leaves are either kept whole for loose-leaf tea or placed in tea bags for steeping. Once the green tea is steeped you can enjoy the healthy nectar of the tea. As you are not consuming the whole leaf like with matcha, it has less antioxidants and caffeine compared to matcha but still packs a healthy boost to your day.
Hannah says
Absolutely glorious! I would never guess that this was banana-based. It looks positively luxurious all around, yet I could easily justify eating it as a healthy breakfast... And plan to. 😉
HWC Magazine says
Thank you Hannah! So glad you like this treat too. I knew you would also be on board with enjoying matcha nice cream for breakfast! (smiling)
Mimi Rippee says
This dessert is so darn pretty! I have matcha but have had no idea what to do with it! Can’t wait!
HWC Magazine says
Thanks so much Mimi! It's the delicious ceremonial grade matcha that gives it this matcha ice cream that gorgeous green hue. If you are looking for recipes to enjoy your matcha, you may also like our black sesame lattes with matcha cold foam or our baked matcha lemon donuts.
Heidi says
I love the vibrant color of the matcha paired with the fresh strawberries... and using banana as a natural sweetener was brilliant. Talk about the perfect no-guilt splurge!!
HWC Magazine says
Thank you Heidi. These matcha nice creams are our go to treat in the summer. With the texture of soft serve, it's a must try summer treat to cool off on these hot and humid days.
Ian says
These look great
Julie at Hostess At Heart says
Healthy and delicious is a win win!