You don’t need to head to a Friendly’s restaurant to enjoy its ice creams. Thanks to pints of store-bought treats, it is possible to dig into the brand’s various ice cream flavors in the comfort of your home. With tried and true classics and more unique flavor combinations, the ice cream lovers in your home can conveniently spoon into a cold carton, and you’ll be ready to top slices of warm pies at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, not every Friendly’s ice cream flavor is worth carting home, as one of our writers discovered. After sampling over one dozen Friendly’s ice cream flavors, the taste of the royal banana split was more disappointing than delicious.
Borrowing inspiration from a traditional banana split recipe, Friendly’s attempt to package the taste of banana, different flavors of ice cream, fudge, and walnuts falls flat. Friendly’s replaces the real banana found in a banana split dessert with a banana-flavored ice cream that leans way too far into the cloying category. The fake taste of this banana ice cream steals the show from the other included flavors. As a result, the strawberry and chocolate ice creams take a step back stage. Though the royal banana split ice cream is speckled with pieces of walnuts, fudge, and pineapple, these small discoveries fail to distract from the overwhelming taste of banana. “It’s terrible,” commented one sampler on Instagram.
Capturing the flavors of banana split in a bowl
Those who love all treats flavored with banana may appreciate scoops of Friendly’s royal banana split, but 1.5 quarts of this ice cream may be better used to sneak into smoothies and milkshakes or paired with dark chocolate tortes and peanut butter-enhanced brownies to help bring balance to dessert time. You can also try rescuing your palate by pairing a scoop of this sweet Friendly’s flavor with another ice cream, like vanilla, then topping your creation with crunchy ingredients like graham cracker cookie crumbles or broken pieces of Oreo cookies to try to steer the treat into a more balanced lane.
For those with an unavoidable desire for a banana split, you may be better off making your own banana split at home, the traditional way, with sliced bananas and separate scoops of ice cream flavors. Alternatively, preemptively stock your kitchen with homemade banana split chocolate bark and banana split bread that can be grabbed on demand when banana split cravings start talking.
