Peel the banana. Mash it with a wooden spoon or a whisk until very smooth in a bowl. Many children love mashing banana. If you have children, ask them to help with this step!
Add ice cream and continue to beat until smooth and the mix is well blended. Aim to have no banana lumps, as lumps of banana can make it harder to use a straw when drinking. Aside from vanilla ice cream, chocolate is a great flavour, as well as other fruit ice creams or gelato that would work with banana. A rotary whisk may remove most of the banana lumps.
Add milk and using a hand whisk, whisk until creamy and frothy (about 2 minutes). This will make a fairly thick milkshake, so you can add more milk and desired sweetener to balance it out to a preferred consistency. Older fashioned milkshakes appear to favour a high milk and sugar ratio to icecream and fruit to make an easy to drink consistency and was shaken with the aim to get a big head of foam when poured in the glass (a bit like an iced cappuccino in concept). More modern recipes seem to favour the "thick-shake" cream-like consistency, so it's easy to make this to suit both styles.
Alternatively, use a cocktail shaker if you have one, by transferring the banana ice cream and milk into that and shaking away. You can also use container with a tight seal (such as a large jar or other storage container). Cocktail shakers or a large jar make the best milkshakes; after all, while the "milk-bar" age was when power blenders were mainstream, they had to use something before electricity was available and most bars would be incomplete without a cocktail shaker. Further to that, shaking or churning milk in a jar is an age old way to make butter.
Taste to ensure it's sweet enough, add a little sweetener if needed, or a little more milk if the ice cream was too sweet. Shake again briefly to mix. It's easiest to add extra ice cream, honey or other syrups which mixes in smoothly, as sugar can stay powdery or gritty in a thick, cold liquid which already contains some sugar.
Serve at once. You may pour the milkshake through a sieve if you want a super smooth milkshake but that does add to the washing up, something less desirable on a hot day!
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