Delicious little frozen bites of banana and chocolate goodness. With a smidge of peanut butter for good measure!
Is there anything that can’t be done with silicon mini muffin pans? They’re one of my most valuable kitchen tools. I use them almost every day, and actually sometimes multiple times in a day. I use them for baby food, freezing fresh squeezed lime juice, baked things like quinoa pizza bites, treats like fruit and nut cacao cups, and for actual mini muffins occasionally too. My freezer is full of ziplock bags of mini muffin sized surprises. My mini muffin pans cost about $3 each from Kmart I think. So if you don’t have any, sort that shit out! You won’t regret it.
Today’s recipe is a dead easy freezer treat, that absolutely requires silicon mini muffin pans. A ‘chocolate’ mixture is made from melted coconut oil, cacao and maple syrup, poured into the pans and set with banana and peanut butter hidden inside.
Once frozen, the banana is quite ice-creamy and the whole mouthful is a special kind of awesome.
You could take this idea in any direction. Use tahini or almond butter instead of peanut butter (or no nut butter). Top them with coconut, freeze dried raspberries, chopped pistachios, slivered almonds, cacao nibs, peanuts, sesame seeds, candied peel, dried fruit, or absolutely whatever you like.
These take less than 10 minutes to make, set in about the same time, and last indefinitely in the freezer.
In terms of nutrition, they have no refined sugar and just look at the side profile.
It’s mostly banana, right? Banana is fruit. These could practically be breakfast huh?
Cacao and banana freezer treats
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup coconut oil, melted if solid
- 1/3 cup cacao powder
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 banana, sliced
- 6 tsp nut butter of your choice, I used smooth Pic's peanut butter
- 1/4 cup coconut threads, approximate
Instructions
- Mix coconut oil, cacao powder and maple syrup.
- Use a 1 tsp measuring spoon to spoon 1 tsp of cacao mixture into the bottom of each mini muffin hole.
- Put the mini muffin pan in the fridge for a few minutes to set (five minutes should be more than enough).
- Remove mini muffin pan from the fridge and put a slice of banana into each muffin hole.
- Top each slice of banana with a 1/2 tsp of nut butter. Smooth the nut butter a little so that it doesn't stick out of the chocolate.
- Give the remaining cacao mixture a stir, as it may have separated a little. Evenly pour into each muffin hole to cover the banana and nut butter. Sprinkle with coconut threads, or topping of your choice.
- Put the mini muffin pan in the freezer until set, then pop the treats out and store in a zip lock bag or container in the freezer. The cacao sets very quickly and you can eat these straight away. They're better if you let them freeze for long enough for the banana to firm up though.
- Serve straight from the freezer.
Nutrition information
These are too cute! I can definitely see myself munching down on a couple.