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. 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 1.5g of coconut oil for every 10g of chocolate ( 27g coconut oil for 180g of chocolate) The more coconut oil you use the thinner the chocolate layer around the banana will be, but too much coconut oil will change the taste of the chocolate too much.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe container ( I used a glass bowl ) for 10 seconds at a time, stirring in between, until most of the chocolate is melted. Stir until the rest of the chocolate is melted. You could melt it in the dipping container, but mine would have been too full to stir the chocolate easily.

Add the Coconut Oil and stir until it's melted and combined. Pour the melted chocolate back into the dipping container.

Step 5: Dip the Popsicles

Remove one or two popsicles from the freezer at a time.

Dip each popsicle to cover the banana and about 5mm of the popsicle stick. Remove the popsicle from the chocolate and let the excess chocolate drip off until the chocolate starts to harden.

When the chocolate has hardened, put the popsicle back in the freezer proof container and freeze until you're ready to enjoy them.

Left over chocolate mixture can be moulded in ice cube trays and kept in the fridge or freezer for the next batch of popsicles.