Banana Ice Cream

Continuing my love affair with my ice cream maker, I made banana ice cream this weekend.  Why can you not find this in grocery stores?  I honestly have no idea; it's ridiculously good.  I stuck with plain banana ice cream, but you could add in some rum flavoring, toasted walnuts or peanuts, or dark chocolate and I think it'd be just as good.

I always use the same standard vanilla ice cream recipe for all of my ice creams, only with this one I omitted the vanilla and instead cooked the mixture with three pureed over-ripe bananas in it.  If I were going to add toasted nuts, I'd add them at the last step as I was pouring the mixture into the ice cream maker.  If I were to add rum flavoring (I'm afraid the alcohol in straight rum would keep it from freezing properly, although I'm not 100% about this), I'd add it as I was cooking the base, probably just a little at a time until it tasted right.
The Best Recipe's vanilla ice cream recipe:

1.5 cups heavy cream
1.5 cups milk
4 egg yolks
3/4 cups sugar

First, combine the cream, milk, and 1/2 cup of the sugar (and 3 mashed over-ripe bananas) in a pan and heat on the stove until it reaches 175 degrees.

In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks and the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and whisk together.

Once the milk/cream mixture has reached 175, ladle a bit of it into the egg/sugar mixture and whisk quickly. Add more milk/cream little by little until it's a soupy consistency, then slowly add the egg/sugar/milk/cream mixture back into the remaining milk/cream on the stove. Continue heating it (while stirring) until it reaches 185 degrees, at which point the eggs are cooked and you can stop.

Remove the pan from the heat and put the mixture into an ice bath to cool. After it's cooled to room temperature or so, cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight until it's sufficiently cold. Once it's thoroughly chilled, you can then make the ice cream in the ice cream maker.