Bananas, berries, and frozen yogurt – individually they’re great, and together they’re even better, right? When I heard of this machine that turns frozen fruit into perfect frozen yogurt, I knew I had to buy it. You know you’re an adult when you’re excited about kitchen gadgets…

The Yonana is pretty simple – push the fruit through the top chute, and it comes out as frozen yogurt from the bottom.

The Yonana machine just requires a frozen banana, and whatever frozen fruit you want to add to the mixture. The banana is what gives it the frozen yogurt consistency, and we added frozen strawberries because it’s what we already had in the freezer. That’s it! No dairy, no fat, no sugars… so simple and healthy. The banana is the key to the creamy texture, but there were recipes which didn’t use bananas, I would imagine the consistency more like a sorbet.

According to Yonana, there’s a “prime” time to freeze your banana for the best taste. Usually the bananas in our freezer are pretty black, which is not ideal apparently. They We had two bananas on the counter which were going to have to do, so we peeled them and put them in the freezer. Everything needs to thaw for about 10 minutes before you use them.

Yonana calls for “cheetah” spotted bananas as the best option to use – the more spots, the better.

FYI – we used two frozen bananas and about 1.5 cups of frozen strawberries and we both got a good sized bowl of yogurt. It was plenty!

You might be thinking… a food processor will do this too, you know. Yeah, it will, and I own one of those (which rarely gets used). I can say the Yonana was FAR easier to use for this purpose, and clean up is much faster.

Simply put a bowl under the machine and catch the yogurt as it falls out. Stir it all together once you’re done, to make sure everything is blended.

The result? Amazing! It honestly tasted so good, and it’s healthy. Ok, take this review with a grain of salt because I’m in competition prep and craving fruit like crazy. But, Kyle really liked it too, and he doesn’t crave fruit at all – only ice cream, LOL.

Lesson learned for future uses / new users –  our bananas weren’t totally frozen, so that impacted the consistency of the mixture. Be prepared in advance and freeze some bananas at the proper ripeness, and peeled – something I don’t usually do.

Things got a little crazy, I added some multi-grain Cheerios for crunch and texture.

Added bonuses:

• The pieces are dishwasher safe, but also rinse clean really easily. There are only two main pieces that need to be washed, so we just cleaned it by hand.
• It comes with a recipe book with a variety of fun sounding recipes. Some of them are pretty involved and actually call for a food processor (to grind up cookies for a crumble or crust). We’ll probably just always stick to basic fruit options, and add fun toppings.
• They come in different colours! Obviously, I got pink.

I can see how this would be something fun to do with kids too, to make healthy desserts at home, and safe enough that they could help “push” the fruit through.

My review – two thumbs up and I can’t wait to use it again!