Jun 25

Giant Banana Split

This post is sponsored by Dreyer’s/Edy’s® Slow Churned Light Ice Cream: all the taste of regular ice cream, but with half the fat and 1/3 fewer calories. Now that’s a reason to smile. Give a smile here.
I’m so excited to share this party idea today on how to make a giant ice cream sundae!! My mom used to do this when I was younger for family reunions or for school or church parties so she gets the credit for this brilliant idea. (It’s funny how some of my favorite ideas came from our mom’s.) I have vivid memories of this from when I was a kid since it is basically the stuff kid dreams are made of. The concept of making this is pretty simple but you either need to be handy with a saw or else hire someone to do it. It is a very simple job and takes about 20 minutes to make so I can’t imagine it would cost very much if you needed to hire it out. I also included some tips for logistically making it happen. Just a warning though, with older kids (or adults) it ends in a food fight 99% of the time, as a kid it was my favorite part! You’ve been warned! You can make it as long as you want depending how many people are coming. It is the kind of thing people will be talking about for months afterwards, it’s SO fun. Find the complete instructions below.

Click through for complete instructions.

Materials Needed
To make the Stands: 1 Carpet Tube, 1 sheet of 1/8″ MDF or Masonite, download these free instructions, a jigsaw, tinfoil, and tape.
For the Banana Splits: 15 Bananas, 7  tubs of ice cream, various toppings like: sprinkles, chocolate + caramel syrup, whip cream, maraschino cherries.

Step 1: For the carpet tube just go into a carpet store and ask for one of the center carpet tubes the rolls of carpet come wrapped around. They are usually 8-10 feet long. Cut the tube in half with a jigsaw. If you have a large group you can use the other half to make the sundae even longer.
Step 2: Cover the half tube in tin foil and tape the bottom so it’s ready to serve food in.


Step 3: You need two stands for each segment of tube. To make the stands we’ve made an easy pdf with instructions to download. You just make two simple pieces with slits that slide together to hold the tube.
Step 4: You’ll want to pre scoop the ice cream the morning of and keep it in the freezer so that when you are assembling the sundae it goes as quickly as possible so the ice cream doesn’t get melty. Lay out a cookie sheet and then lay all the scoops out, lay down wax paper in between layers of scoops. Keep them in the freezer until immediately before eating.
Step 5: For the assembly get lots of help from friends. For this I set up the stand and cut the bananas right before everyone got there. Then when it was time for the banana split I had 2-3 people putting down ice cream and toppings and had another person hand out all the spoons. The toppings were opened and ready to go. The whole thing took less than 4 minutes to assemble.
Step 6: After 10-20 minutes of eating the whole thing gets melty. That’s usually about the time the food fight ensues. For clean up you can recycle the cardboard and tin foil and hose off the grass (and people.) Have fun!

Special thanks to Alexis Birkmeyer + Paul Ferney for help with production and photography. And thank you to all my friends for coming to the ice cream party!

Category: DIY projects, parties + party ideas

Posted by jordan on Jun 25, 2012

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