8 juil. 2025

Fruity Ice Creams Without a Machine: What Actually Sets the Texture

Blended frozen fruit succeeds or fails on one variable, and it is neither freezing time nor blender power: it is total solids. Three hundred grams of raw banana contain 24.2% total solids according to the French ANSES Ciqual table. Three hundred grams of raspberry contain 13.2%. The first gives a cream you can scoop, the second gives a block of shaved ice, and no amount of pulsing will close an eleven point gap.

Swiss law put a number on that boundary before we did. Annexe 3 of the federal ordinance on plant-based foodstuffs requires a minimum of 25% total solids before a product may be sold as sorbet, and 30% before it may be called an ice. Banana alone falls below both. That does not make the preparation bad, but it explains why it sets rock hard in the freezer while a commercial tub stays soft.

The other number nobody puts on the page: those same 300 g of banana carry 46.8 g of sugars. The NHS daily maximum for free sugars in an adult is 30 g. Under the UK definition of free sugars published in Public Health Nutrition in 2018, sugars in fruit purées whose cell structure has been broken down count as free. Blending a fruit changes its nutritional status, and that is exactly what we are doing here.

What total solids measure, and why everything hangs on them

In a frozen dessert the water never freezes completely. Part of it stays liquid, loaded with dissolved sugars and other compounds, and that unfrozen phase is what makes the product yield to a spoon. The more dissolved solids there are, the lower the freezing point falls and the larger the fraction of water that stays liquid at any given temperature.

A 2025 study in Foods on whey-based ice cream gives the order of magnitude: the freezing point of traditional ice creams sits between -3.6 and -2.4 °C. A domestic freezer runs at around -18 °C, as the UK Food Standards Agency notes. Fifteen degrees separate the two, and that gap is where the difference between a cream and a brick is decided.

Here is what five weighed bases give, calculated from the ANSES Ciqual 2020 table. For almond and tahini, whose EU Regulation 1169/2011 energy column is blank in the table, energy was recalculated using the conversion factors in Annex XIV of the same regulation.

Base	Mass	Total solids	Sugars	Fibre	Energy
Banana alone	300 g	24.2%	46.8 g	8.1 g	272 kcal
Banana 200 g + strawberry 120 g	320 g	18.8%	37.9 g	10.0 g	227 kcal
Banana 200 g + strawberry 120 g + almond 15 g	335 g	22.2%	38.6 g	11.8 g	317 kcal
Banana 240 g + cocoa 10 g + tahini 15 g	265 g	31.0%	37.6 g	10.5 g	349 kcal
Mango 260 g + coconut milk 60 g	320 g	20.0%	34.8 g	4.5 g	305 kcal
Raspberry alone	300 g	13.2%	16.2 g	12.9 g	148 kcal

Only one of these six bases reaches the 30% total solids that Annexe 3 would require of an ice: the one containing cocoa and tahini. Unsweetened cocoa powder is 96.5% solids, tahini 97%, whole almond 95.2%. Twenty-five grams of those ingredients do more for texture than two extra hours in the freezer.

This also explains the recurring failure of banana-free bases. Raspberry alone is 13.2% solids, which is another way of saying it is 86.8% water. There is nothing to blend, there is water to freeze.

Why it turns gritty the next day

The second variable is ice crystal size, and it depends not on the recipe but on time and temperature. The phenomenon is called recrystallisation: small crystals partly melt and redeposit onto larger ones with every temperature fluctuation in the freezer.

The 2025 study cited above measured that growth. The control sample, with no stabiliser, showed a mean crystal diameter of 18.50 micrometres at 24 hours, rising to 27.50 micrometres after one month of storage. Samples containing yeast β-glucan went from 8.49 to 9.52 micrometres over the same period. Growth was cut roughly ninefold.

Industrial ice cream carries stabilisers and emulsifiers precisely for this. A home preparation carries none, unless you supply them indirectly: fruit pectin, soluble fibre, and the protein and fat in nut butters all pull weakly in the same direction. The practical consequence is easy to state and unwelcome to hear: home-blended fruit ice is a same-day product. What you freeze for the week will not be what you blended.

The 2025 review in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety on ice cream meltdown adds a factor domestic kitchens cannot reproduce: overrun, the air whipped in during churning. High overrun slows melting through the insulating effect of the air cells, and it contributes to lightness on the palate. A blender incorporates almost no air in any stable way. That is a structural difference, not a technique fault.

Sugar: what is actually in the bowl

The most common claim made for these desserts is that they are naturally sweetened, therefore fine. The numbers do not follow.

The World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars to below 10% of daily energy intake, roughly 50 g for someone consuming 2000 kcal, with further benefit expected below 5%. The NHS sets an adult maximum of 30 g a day, 24 g for children aged 7 to 10, 19 g for ages 4 to 6, 14 g for ages 2 to 3, and 10 g at one year.

Sugars in a whole fruit do not count as free sugars. Sugars in a fruit purée do. The UK definition adopted in 2018 is explicit: it includes all sugars naturally present in fruit and vegetable juices, purées and pastes in which the structure has been broken down. A 300 g bowl of blended banana therefore delivers 46.8 g of sugars that, under this definition, are counted as free. That is one and a half times an adult’s daily maximum.

The NHS applies the same logic to smoothies, capping juices and smoothies at a combined 150 ml a day and advising that they be drunk with meals rather than between them, to reduce exposure of the teeth.

Three practical consequences follow.

Syrups are not an improvement. Maple syrup, agave syrup and honey fall explicitly within the free sugars definition for both the WHO and the NHS. Adding a spoon of agave to a base already carrying 38 g of sugars does not make it a healthier dessert, only a sweeter one.

The nutritionally more interesting base is the one with the least banana. Raspberry alone delivers 16.2 g of sugars and 12.9 g of fibre for 148 kcal; banana alone delivers 46.8 g of sugars and 8.1 g of fibre for 272 kcal. Raspberry is also the one with the worst texture. You have to pick, and the sensible compromise is to blend the two rather than stack up the sweetest fruits.

Portion size matters. The Swiss FSVO reference for fruit is two portions a day, a portion being around 120 g, within a total of five portions of fruit and vegetables. The NHS counts 80 g per portion; the WHO asks for at least 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day for anyone over 10. A 300 g bowl of blended fruit is a substantial dessert, not a neutral snack.

What Swiss law lets you write, and what it forbids

If you sell this preparation, or describe it publicly, two ordinances apply.

The federal ordinance on plant-based foodstuffs defines an edible ice as a frozen or semi-frozen preparation intended to be eaten in a frozen state. It requires base mixes to be pasteurised before freezing, and sets a minimum weight of 450 g per litre of finished product. Annexe 3 sets out the sales designations: a fruit sorbet must contain at least 20% fruit by mass (6% for lemons, 10% for other citrus) and at least 25% total solids; a water ice, at most 3% total fat and at least 15% solids; an ice cream, at least 6% milk fat where ingredients have been added and 8% where they have not, with 30% total solids.

A blended fruit base clears the fruit proportion easily, usually fails on total solids, and is not pasteurised. So it is not a sorbet in the sense of the ordinance. It is a frozen fruit dessert, which is an accurate and sufficient description.

The federal ordinance on food information governs claims. Its Annexe 13 sets the following thresholds. “Low in sugars” requires no more than 5 g of sugars per 100 g for a solid food: the banana-strawberry base carries 11.9 g per 100 g and is disqualified. “Sugar-free” requires no more than 0.5 g per 100 g, which no fruit preparation will ever reach. “With no added sugars” is defensible, provided no monosaccharide or disaccharide and no food used for its sweetening properties has been added, which rules out syrups, honey and date purée; the label must then carry the statement that the product contains naturally occurring sugars.

On fibre, Annexe 13 allows the claim “source of fibre” from 3 g per 100 g or 1.5 g per 100 kcal. The banana-strawberry base reaches 3.1 g per 100 g and 4.38 g per 100 kcal, so it qualifies. Raspberry alone, at 4.3 g per 100 g and 8.74 g per 100 kcal, clears even the 6 g per 100 g or 3 g per 100 kcal that permits “high in fibre”. The mango-coconut base, at 1.4 g per 100 g, clears neither.

These thresholds are useful even with no commercial intent: they give precise vocabulary for describing what you have made, instead of words like “healthy” or “light” that mean nothing.

It is worth noting which category a fruit base actually lands in. Under Annexe 3 a water ice needs only 15% total solids and no more than 3% total fat. Five of the six bases in the table clear 15% solids, and those without nut butter, cocoa or coconut milk also sit below 3% fat. So anyone comparing the result to a tub of dairy ice cream is comparing against the wrong category: the closest legal neighbour is water ice, whose fat content is capped and whose solids requirement is half as demanding. That explains the texture better than any recipe tweak, and it takes some of the sting out of expecting a supermarket ice cream.

Frozen berries: the safety point most recipes skip

A red fruit base is blended from frozen and eaten raw. That is precisely the configuration behind several documented outbreaks.

An investigation published in Epidemiology and Infection in 2016 describes a norovirus outbreak in Oslo in November 2013 after two meetings at a conference centre. Of 168 participants, 147 responded to the questionnaire and 74 met the case definition, exactly half. Raspberry mousse was associated with illness at an adjusted risk ratio of 3.4 (95% confidence interval 1.4 to 8.2), and 70 of the 74 cases had eaten it. The imported frozen raspberries had not been heat-treated. The authors explicitly recommend heat-treating imported frozen berries before consumption.

Hepatitis A virus travels the same route. A 2018 Eurosurveillance investigation linked 20 Swedish and 14 Austrian cases to frozen strawberries produced in Poland, with a strain sequenced from the fruit at 100% identity. A 2026 paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases describes 24 patients in the Netherlands who fell ill between November 2024 and February 2025, with the outbreak strain’s RNA detected in frozen blueberries from one supermarket chain.

Switzerland is not outside this. On 28 July 2026 the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office issued a public warning over norovirus detected in a 300 g frozen berry mix sold at Lidl, with withdrawal from sale and a recall. The office also notes that 10 to 100 viral particles are enough to transmit norovirus, and that foodborne transmission mainly involves raw or unheated foods.

What this changes in the kitchen: bring frozen berries to the boil for one minute, cool them, then refreeze before blending. You lose a little vitamin C and some firmness, and you gain the one measure that actually inactivates these viruses. The precaution matters most for older people, young children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people. Bananas, mangoes and pineapples you peel and freeze yourself do not raise this issue: they are not implicated in these investigations.

Children and infants: two specific prohibitions

Two ingredients that recur in these recipes are contraindicated in the youngest eaters, and recipes rarely mention it.

Honey must not be given before one year of age. The NHS notes that it can occasionally contain bacteria producing toxins in an infant’s gut, causing infant botulism, a serious illness.

Whole nuts must not be given before five years of age because of the choking risk. Nut butters and ground nuts are usable from the start of weaning, provided they are spread on or mixed into a food rather than given alone off a spoon.

Add sugar to the list: the NHS sets no numerical limit below one year, because the recommendation is to add none at all. A bowl of blended fruit is therefore not an infant dessert, whatever the quality of the fruit.

The method, with numbers instead of impressions

What follows starts from total solids rather than from freezing time.

Freeze the fruit flat, in 2 to 3 cm pieces, on a tray before transferring it to a container. Separate pieces blend, a welded block does not. Allow at least four hours; what counts is not the duration but the core reaching freezer temperature.

Pick the banana at its ripest. During ripening starch converts to sugars and firmness falls, which the four-stage ripening study published in Plants in 2025 confirms: firmness declines continuously and total soluble solids accumulate progressively from green to brown-spotted. A brown-speckled banana blends better and sweetens more at equal mass.

Aim for 22 to 30% total solids. In practice, for 300 g of fruit, add 15 to 25 g of a high-solids ingredient: almond butter, tahini, unsweetened cocoa powder, desiccated coconut. The table above gives the effect of each. This is the only lever that really moves the final texture.

Cap the liquid at 20 ml to start. Every addition dilutes the solids and moves you towards a milkshake. Coconut milk is the exception, since it supplies 24.9% solids, but also 16.5 g of saturated fat per 100 g: the mango-coconut base in the table carries 9.9 g of saturated fat, roughly half the WHO daily reference for an adult on 2000 kcal.

Blend in short pulses, scraping the sides. Long blending heats the mixture, melts the crystals and forces you to refreeze, which produces larger crystals.

Serve immediately. If you must store it, spread the mixture in a thin layer in a flat sealed container, and take it out 10 to 15 minutes before serving. A thin layer shortens the distance the cold has to travel, and a sealed container limits surface dehydration.

Respect the temperature rules. The FSA recommends a freezer at around -18 °C, a fridge between 0 and 5 °C, and a maximum of four hours out of chilled storage during preparation. Do not refreeze a preparation that has thawed completely.

Two weighed bases, with their figures

Banana, strawberry and almond. 200 g of ripe banana sliced and frozen, 120 g of frozen strawberries, 15 g of whole almond butter, the zest of half a lemon. Pulse the fruit, fold in the almond butter at the end. For the whole batch: 317 kcal, 38.6 g of sugars, 11.8 g of fibre, 79 mg of vitamin C, 111 mg of magnesium, 22.2% total solids. Fibre reaches 3.5 g per 100 g, which clears the Annexe 13 threshold for “source of fibre”.

Banana, cocoa and tahini. 240 g of ripe frozen banana, 10 g of unsweetened cocoa powder, 15 g of tahini, a pinch of salt. Blend the banana alone first, add the cocoa, then the tahini. For the whole batch: 349 kcal, 37.6 g of sugars, 10.5 g of fibre, 6.3 mg of iron, 131 mg of magnesium, 31.0% total solids. This is the only base in the table that would reach the total solids threshold of an ice under Annexe 3, and it is also the one that stays softest in the freezer. Most of the iron comes from the cocoa, at 48.5 mg per 100 g in Ciqual; absorption is heavily limited by the phytate and polyphenols in the cocoa itself, so that figure should not be read as usable iron.

The mistakes that keep coming back

Compensating for missing solids with time. A base at 13% solids will stay hard however long you freeze it. The lever is the dry ingredient, not the clock.

Adding liquid to help the blender. This is the most common cause of a runny result. If the machine strains, cut smaller pieces or let them temper for three minutes.

Treating syrups as healthy alternatives. Maple syrup, agave syrup, honey and date purée all count as free sugars. Ciqual puts maple syrup at 62.6 g of sugars per 100 g and agave syrup at 70.2 g.

Blending imported frozen berries without heating them. Three published investigations and a 2026 Swiss federal warning make this precaution hard to wave away, especially if the dessert is served to children or vulnerable people.

Refreezing the same batch repeatedly. Every cycle grows the crystals. The one-month measurement shows growth from 18.5 to 27.5 micrometres under stable storage alone; melt-and-refreeze cycles accelerate that.

Hiding vegetables on the assumption that it is neutral. A handful of fresh spinach in a fruit base does not meaningfully change the intake, because the amount actually eaten is small against the 80 to 120 g of a portion. It is not harmful, it is simply not the move that improves a diet.

What this article cannot tell you

The composition figures come from Ciqual 2020, which is a French table. Banana sugar content varies with cultivar and ripeness, strawberry content with variety and season; deviations of 10 to 20% from the table are normal.

The crystal size measurements cited were taken on a whey concentrate ice cream, not on a fruit purée. The order of magnitude and the mechanism transfer, the absolute values do not.

The Annexe 3 thresholds for edible ices describe sales designations. They are used here as compositional reference points, not as obligations on a home preparation.

None of the work cited measures a health effect of blended fruit dessert. The figures on free sugars, fibre and portions come from public health guidance, not from trials on this specific dessert.

Frequently asked questions

Can you really make this without banana? Yes, but you have to make up the solids. Mango is the best fruit substitute at 18.9% solids against banana’s 24.2%. Berries alone are not enough and need a fat or dry addition.

Does avocado improve the texture? It supplies 205 kcal and 20.6 g of fat per 100 g, at 29.7% total solids in Ciqual. So it pulls in the right direction, provided you accept that the dessert becomes considerably more energy-dense.

How long does a home batch keep? Safety and quality are separate questions. At -18 °C the preparation stays safe for a long time; its texture degrades within days because of recrystallisation. Reckon on the same day for ideal texture, two to three days for an acceptable result after tempering.

Do sugars in blended fruit really count as free sugars? Under the UK definition adopted in 2018 and used in NHS guidance, yes, once the fruit structure has been broken down. The WHO applies the same logic to juices. A fruit eaten whole does not count.

Should Swiss frozen berries be heated too? The investigations cited concern imported berries, and the July 2026 Swiss warning concerned a product sold in Switzerland. The heating advice targets frozen berries eaten raw in general, and it matters more the more vulnerable the eater.

Can you write “no added sugars” on a batch you give away? If you add no sugar, syrup, honey or date purée, the claim matches the conditions in point 19 of Annexe 13 of the food information ordinance, which then requires the statement that the product contains naturally occurring sugars.

Does a powerful blender make up for the lack of a machine? It makes up for the grinding, not the overrun. The 2025 meltdown review notes that air whipped in during churning affects melting rate and structure. A blender incorporates no air in any stable way, and no amount of wattage crosses that line.

Does this dessert count towards five a day? Swiss FSVO guidance counts two fruit portions a day within five portions of fruit and vegetables. The NHS explicitly caps juices and smoothies at one portion a day whatever the quantity. A fruit purée follows the same logic.

More on the site

Our breakdown of sugar and natural alternatives goes into syrups and glycaemic index in detail. Natural sugars such as date, maple and lucuma are examined one by one, and a 30-day no-added-sugar plan offers a practical framework.

On frozen desserts, the page on vegan frozen desserts, nice-cream and quick sorbets covers the fast format, and raw desserts with dates and cocoa share the same solids logic. Sweet silken tofu desserts offer a higher-protein alternative.

For equipment and technique, see choosing the right blender and quick blender recipes. On freezing in general, anti-waste practices such as freezing, fermenting and dehydrating and proper storage of fruit, vegetables and legumes round out the subject. Finally, balanced smoothies handle the same raw material in a drunk rather than frozen format.