Easy Salted Caramel & Peanut Butter, Chocolate Dipped Banana Popsicles
Introduction: Easy Salted Caramel & Peanut Butter, Chocolate Dipped Banana Popsicles
I've always liked frozen bananas dipped in chocolate, but I was looking for a way to make them even better.
Frozen bananas dipped in chocolate taste pretty good. Frozen Bananas filled with salted caramel and peanut butter and dipped in chocolate taste amazing!
These popsicles are easy to make and, while there is a bit of cooling and freezing time involved, they come together fairly quickly.
Supplies
You will need:
Bananas
Popsicle Sticks (2 per banana)
Dark chocolate ( how much you need will depend on the container you use for dipping)
Peanut butter (about a teaspoon per banana)
For the Salted Caramel Sauce:
The recipe makes much more than you need for a few bananas but there's no such thing as too much salted caramel sauce! Left over sauce can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge.
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Water
1/4 cup Cream
28g Butter (cut into cubes)
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Tools and Utensils:
Freezer safe container
Microwave safe / heat proof bowls
Small saucepan
Whisk
Knife
Measuring spoons
Heat proof spatula
Container for dipping the bananas (I used a small glass)
Pastry brush
Kitchen scale
Step 1: Making the Salted Caramel Sauce
Place the Sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat and slowly stir until the sugar is melted. Do not stir the sugar after this.
If sugar crystals form on the sides of the saucepan, brush them off with a pastry brush dipped in water. Swirl the pot carefully to mix the sugar if it's not changing colour evenly.
Bring the sugar to a boil and heat until it's a golden brown/amber/caramel colour. A darker colour will result in a more bitter tasting caramel. If you accidentally take it too far, try adding more salt to balance out the bitter taste. I've saved very dark caramel this way.
Remove the sugar from the heat, add the cubed butter and stir with a whisk to combine.
Add the cream, vanilla extract and salt and stir with a whisk.
Transfer the sauce to a heat proof bowl and leave it to cool to room temperature.
Step 2: Cut and Scoop the Bananas
When the caramel sauce has cooled to room temperature, cut each banana in half crosswise.
Then cut each half in half, lengthwise. Make sure you keep the matching quarters together.
Using a small spoon ( I used a quarter teaspoon measuring spoon) scoop out about half a teaspoon of the banana, leaving the top and bottom intact.
Step 3: Assembling the Popsicles
Melt the peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl 20 to 30 seconds at a time. I had about a tablespoon of peanut butter and it took about a minute to melt. 604
Put the melted peanut butter in a plastic bag or piping bag and cut off a small piece of the tip.
Pipe a line of peanut butter in each banana quarter. Alternatively you could spread the peanut butter in the banana with a knife, but the bananas are quite slippery, so you might not get even peanut butter distribution this way.
Fill each scooped out banana quarter with salted caramel. In my case it took about a 1/2 teaspoon per quarter.
Place a popsicle stick on one of the banana quarters and then place the matching quarter on top. My bananas were too short for my popsicle sticks, so I cut about a third off each popsicle stick.
The caramel shouldn't ooze out of the sides, but if it does or if you're worried that it will, you can wrap them in tin foil or cling wrap before you freeze them.
Place the filled and assembled bananas in a freezer safe container and freeze them until they're solid. I put them in the freezer for about 2 hours.
Step 4: Prepare the Chocolate for Dipping
How much chocolate you need will depend on the container you're using for dipping. I used a small glass that was just big enough to dip and cover half a banana. Preferably the container should be microwave proof, in case you need to reheat the chocolate.
To start I filled the glass with chocolate pieces to measure how much I would need. A glass and a half of chocolate pieces melted down to about a glass. I ended up using 180g of chocolate.
I used 1. 136