Dreamy Peanut Butter Banana Popsicles

Banana popsicles are the best – think ‘nice cream’ in popsicle form! With a good hit of creamy peanut butter, dates to sweeten, and a crackly chocolate coating, they’re the best summer treat. Maybe tied with coconut milk chocolate ice cream.

Although banana and fruit blended ice cream is pretty accessible to anyone with a food processor or high speed blender, it’s really only good right when it’s made. Popsicles can be made in advance, kept in the freezer, and pulled out whenever you need a treat.

This is an older recipe, something I’ve been making for about five years, but it’s one that I come back to time and time again. A real favourite – you can’t say no to healthy popsicles.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Bananas: the riper, the better. They should be spotty at least. The more ripe the bananas, the sweeter they are and with the most banana flavour.
• Peanut butter: natural, unsweetened peanut butter. The ingredients should be peanuts and possibly salt.
• Dark chocolate: any kind of chocolate can be used in place of dark chocolate, including melted chocolate chips (though I find the texture a bit waxy when frozen when using chips). The dark chocolate provides a nice counterbalance to the sweet fruit, but if you have a real sweet tooth, you may like a lighter chocolate. You can also use raw chocolate.
• Coconut oil: this adds a bit of shine and a better snap to the chocolate coating, but it can be left out.

Step by Step

Step 1: add the popsicle ingredients to a food processor or blender.
Step 2: blend on high speed until very smooth.
Step 3: spoon this mixture into popsicle moulds and freeze.
Step 4: once frozen, dip in melted chocolate and freeze again until serving.

Recipe Notes

I recommend only adding the salt in the recipe if your peanut butter is unsalted. And make sure you’re using plain peanut butter, with no sugar or oils added – it’ll ruin the texture otherwise (and be way too sweet).

Adding coconut oil to the chocolate during melting isn’t completely necessary, but it creates a kind of magic shell. The chocolate coating will be snappier and set more quickly, better all around for popsicles!

Try adding some extra spices or flavours to the mix – cinnamon, cardamom, a little cocoa, whatever you like. You could also fold chopped nuts into the banana mixture before placing it into the moulds.

Expert Tips

• Make them without moulds: if you don’t have popsicle moulds, you can freeze this in small cups instead, and use spoons instead of popsicle sticks. Some people use little paper cups or reused yogurt cups, any smaller container like that.
• Soak the dates: if your dates are a bit dry, soak them in very hot water for at least half an hour and drain before blending. I usually use deglet noor dates.
• Sweeten to taste: if your bananas aren’t quite ripe enough, you can either add more dates, or one or two tablespoons of liquid sweetener like maple syrup. I find these popsicles plenty sweet, but go by your taste.

More Frozen Treats

Vegan Toasted Coconut Ice Cream
Lemon Elderflower Popsicles
Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Blueberry Swirl Yogurt Popsicles

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This recipe was originally published in June 2016. It has been updated most recently as of June 2022.

Occasionally Eggs

by Alexandra Daum

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