Frozen Chocolate Banana Bites

Ok, let's just clear this up. This has nothing to do with babies. But there is a picture of a cute one in a minute.

Anyway, this week I read about Frozen Chocolate Banana Bites. The recipe for these are here. Really, there is no "recipe," it's pretty much common sense, but I want to give credit because as simple as these things are, I never ever thought of making them, which makes me a LOSER, because they are GOOD. That was quite a run-on sentence.

The original recipe calls for peanut butter to be mixed in with the chocolate. I do like peanut butter alright, but 90 percent of the time I am not a fan of PB and chocolate together. The other 10 percent I am either having a weird craving, or I am pregnant, which also means I am having a weird craving. In any event, I left the peanut butter out, but feel free to give it a shot.

So anyway, here are the ingredients I used:

• 3 bananas

 

• 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
  
  


• sprinkles and such

 

• an "assistant"  
  
  

And here is what I did:

1. Cut up bananas into bite-sized pieces. Feed several to assistant.

2. Melt chocolate chips in a bowl. Now, this got tricky for me. I melted them in the microwave, which worked, but the chocolate began to harden after just a few dips. I tried to reheat the chocolate, and that was a colossal failure, it just got weird and lumpy. So I had to melt the other half of the bag in a new bowl and then in my head said "go GO GO" and dipped as fast as humanly possible. Even so, I still had an entire banana left when the chocolate started to harden again. I would suggest melting the chocolate in a double boiler so it stays warm and fluid the whole time. Forget the microwave. Then pass assistant off to the Daddy so you can concentrate.

 

3. Dip the bananas into the chocolate. Easy enough.

4. Put them on a wax paper-lined cookie sheet.

5. Add sprinkles, chopped nuts, coconut, or nothing if you're a purist (or lazy).

6. Freeze for an hour, then transfer to a container with a lid and freeze for another couple hours.

Voila!

The original recipe link above says these taste like vanilla ice cream on the inside. I have to disagree -- tasted like banana ice cream to me, which, let's face it, shouldn't be surprising. We tried these and I would make that double boiler change AND I would cut the banana pieces in half next time... these were kinda big and whether you bit into them or shoved the whole thing in your mouth, the result was tasty but COLD. Like, bordering on painful cold. So do yourself a favor and cut them small!

The things I love about these are 1) they are easy to make, 2) they are cheap, 3) the chocolate makes it feel like a really special treat, yet 4) these are better for you than most really special treats. Because, hey, they're fruit. Chocolate covered fruit, but fruit nonetheless. Still better for you than ice cream!