This is just one version of nice cream that we have on Drugstore Divas. For another, try our chocolate banana ice cream.

Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream Recipe

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Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream Ingredients:

You can get the full list of ingredients with measurements in the recipe card below.

• Cherries – We use fresh cherries when they’re in season. You could use frozen cherries as well.
• Bananas – This recipe uses ripe, fresh bananas. The riper the bananas, the sweeter the ice cream will be.
• Unsweetened cocoa powder – Unsweetened cocoa powder adds a chocolatey flavor without adding any sweetness. If you don’t have any, you can use hot chocolate mix instead. Just know that hot chocolate mix is sweetened, so you may want to use less sweetener.
• Sweetener – We use maple syrup because we always have it in our refrigerator. You could use agave syrup, honey, or gum syrup instead.
• Mini chocolate chips – We add these to add a little texture to the ice cream.

How To Make Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream:

Wash and pit the cherries.

The easiest way I found to do this is by using a cherry pitter. If you don’t have one yet, I highly recommend buying one. We have this cherry pitter and it’s so much quicker than pitting them by hand.

If you don’t have one, you can cut the cherries in half and then remove the pits. That works, but it’s really tedious and messy (so I advise not wearing a white shirt while doing this because there’s a chance you’ll get cherry juice everywhere).

Put the cherries in a freezer-safe bag or container and freeze them overnight.

Slice the bananas into half-inch thick rounds and put them in a freezer-safe bag or container.

Freeze them overnight as well.

Quick note: Freezing the bananas as slices helps them freeze more evenly. Plus, it’s easier for the food processor or blender to break down smaller pieces. Trying to blend a huge chunk of frozen banana is a lot of work on the blades and can cause your blender to break, so we don’t recommend that.

The next day, put the frozen banana slices and cherries in a blender or food processor.

Add the unsweetened cocoa powder.

Add the maple syrup.

You could use honey, agave syrup, or gum syrup as your sweetener as well. As long as it’s a liquid sweetener, it will work. A granulated sugar won’t incorporate properly into this and will leave a gritty texture.

Blend until smooth.

The blender helps to heat up the frozen fruit as it blends, so this should only take a couple of minutes.

If you need to, scrape down the fruit from the sides to make sure it’s all blended.

Be careful to not overblend the fruit. It’ll change the texture from an ice cream to more like a smoothie if you do.

Pour the mini chocolate chips into the fruit mixture.

Stir them in.

We do this by hand to keep the mini chocolate chips whole. But, you could pulse them in with the blender to incorporate them better. Just be careful to not blend too much because you risk heating the fruit up too much and changing the consistency.

Mini chocolate chips work better than full-size ones. The larger ones take up too much of each bite, so it throws the ratio off. But, if all you have are the regular size chocolate chips, you can chop them a little smaller and add them in.

Scoop the ice cream into bowls and serve with a couple of extra chocolate chips on top.

Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream: Frequently Asked Questions

More Cherry Recipes:

If you bought too many cherries and you’re wondering what to make with them, try our Cherry Arugula Salad With Burrata And Prosciutto recipe. It’s one of my favorite salads.