Welcome to the 30 Day Pinterest Challenge where I attempt to work my way through 30 days of things I find on Pinterest. You can read further details on my original post.
I should have known this one was doomed from the beginning when your kids eat your key ingredient the first day you attempt to do it and then the second try you find your camera is dead and needs charged. Yay for cell phone pictures! I actually went this route because I figured it’d be easy and I’d like to start out on a successful note. It’s amazing how horribly wrong an essentially 2 ingredient project can go.
Growing up my mom always made dipped banana-sicles. Like this:
You can find the pin here: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/29554941279637310/
My complaint with these was always that as a kid they were kinda hard to bite into once frozen solid. Enter these little bits of awesomeness from Dole ®
I’ve been known to buy and eat these in the car ride home. Everything to love about the treat from my childhood in an easy to eat while hiding behind a bathroom door form. Ever tried to shove a whole candy bar in your mouth before your kid notices you’re eating something they might feel they have a right to? Dippers, yay; full banana-sicle, fail.
But these have to be simple to make at home right? Enter this pin:
I even skipped the peanut butter for simplicity’s sake.
Starting out I knew going in that my bananas were ripper than they should have been. You want ones that are just pass the green and still firm. Ours had already started to brown in spots, but I figured I could make it work. Did you know that squeezing bananas at the end makes them easier to open and remove the little seed? Try it, your mind will be blown.
Then we sliced up our starting to brown bananas. See the nice little half inch slices, I was feeling pretty good at this point seeing them all set up on the parchment lined cookie sheet that we then threw into the freezer and went to run errands and do chores.
We even took a bit of time to slice up all the monster zucchinis from the garden. Handy tip, if you sort them in to bags already in 1,2, and 3 cup portions then they are ready to thaw for your recipes. We enjoy yummy muffins and breads all winter using this method.
At least that task was a success. Next we melt up our chocolate for dipping. I add a little shortening to my chocolate to give it that candy store shine. About 1 TBS to a cup of chocolate and mix it while melting.
This is where my common sense flew out the window. I had to make room in the freezer for all the zucchini bags, so I pulled out the tray of the bananas. However, I hadn’t gotten the chocolate all melted first and sorely underestimated the heat index in my kitchen. Bananas melting faster than I could dip them lead to a less than pleasant experience, next time we’ll do smaller batches instead of attempting to rush through them all. Using a for helps the chocolate drip off the bottom when dipping, though the melty bananas helped everything slide off the bottom anyway. I delegated the sprinkle job to Eldest who decided I meant sprinkles and peanuts rather than one or the other.
You can see where the goop came out of the bottoms a bit. They tasted nummy once they froze again, but left something to be desired in the looks department. Hey, it’s what’s inside that counts, right? Too bad what’s inside is slightly over ripened twice froze banana.
I will do these again, but probably on a day when I have a little less going on and don’t forget my basic kitchening skills. Only 29 more days to go!
