Pinned: Success or Fail? Chocolate Covered PB Bananas

Another Pinterest review post from Sharon Fain! We're glad she's making this a regular thing. :)

I am no Julia Child in the kitchen, but I can follow a recipe. As I've mentioned before, I am also often impatient and lazy, which is probably why I am no Julia Child. So I am in love with simple recipes that don't require lots of prep or speciality techniques. 

I found this Pinterest recipe for chocolate covered frozen bananas that also have a dollop of peanut butter on top. I thought, "This sounds and easy enough." And looks to be delicious because I go through boxes of those chocolate covered frozen banana slices from Trader Joe's all the time.

The ingredients (yes, my milk is in a small container
because I don't usually buy milk and had to borrow some)

Here's the basics of the recipe (parentheses mine):

2 large bananas (I used three small ones)
1/4 cup nat­ural peanut but­ter (why measure this when you can just spoon directly from jar)
1/2 cup choco­late chips (hah! double that)
2 tbsp-1/4 cup milk of choice

This is about how far I got before the chocolate ran out.
I had to go back and add to some.

Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper or parch­ment. Slice bananas into coins about 1/2–3/4 inch thick. Spread a lit­tle dol­lop of peanut but­ter on top of each one. In a small bowl, com­bine the choco­late chips and milk: remem­ber, less is more. Microwave in 15 sec­ond increments until you can whisk them together. You want it to be a dip-able con­sis­tency, not spread­able. Add a splash more milk if nec­es­sary. Dip the banana chunks using a fork as a little chocolate-coating fork­lift, dip­ping them into the melted choco­late. Place choco­late coated bananas on the pre­pared sheet and place in freezer until completely frozen: 3–5 hours (mine took probably on the 2-3 side). Remove frozen banana chunks from the sheet and store in a freezer container.

Setting up in the freezer!

Success or Fail? Success on Taste, Fail on Recipe

THE FAIL:
I guess this is why you do these things because how could such a simple recipe go wrong? Well, first of all the peanut butter was very difficult to wrangle in the chocolate covering process (hence my very messy photos). I would suggest freezing the cookie sheet of banana slices with the PB on it before going into the step with the chocolate covering, especially if you are using a PB that is not a processed kind like Jif or Skippy. I did this on a cool day and even after a few minutes my PB started to spread on the bananas and then became completely uncooperative during the chocolate process.

Also, I did try the chocolate dipping technique the blog pictures, but because of the PB it wasn't happening and because the chocolate was just maybe a little to thick to be "dip-able." This is probably a bit my fault since I fear burning chocolate after some bad experiences. However, the unruly PB still would have made this hard to do even if it was as watery as chocolate syrup.

In the end I just spooned the chocolate on top of the banana slices (which I held over the bowl in a spoon). It did the trick.

The chocolate was not really enough either. Even if the consistency would have been more liquid, I don't think it would have helped (I also like a lot of chocolate).

THE SUCCESS:
I tried one of the bananas before it went in the freezer and it didn't taste that great. I was a little afraid it would be too peanut buttery. But when I took them out of the freezer they were delicious. They set up very nicely and store really well. I ate them in two days. Despite the inaccuracies of the recipe, I would do it again.

These got eaten real quick!

What about you? Would love to hear how this recipe turns out for you and any other tips or tricks you may have to perfecting it.