Chocolate Chili Peanut Butter Popsicles

During my fourth year, I've been more able to give things outside of medical school more focus than I could during my third year. It's still pretty novel for me, but I'm trying to enjoy it. Going on run and experiencing summer: the smells, the colors, the inevitable allergic rhinitis. Dog walking and the inevitable apologizing for Krinkle barking a dog 10x his size. Trying new recipes and the inevitable mishaps (never put turnip and beet in coconut curry) and the undeniable successes.

These popsicles fall into the latter category. I forgot I had these popsicle mold I bought last summer with dreams of all different kinds of frozen treats. In reality, I made 2-3 types of popsicles and packed the molds away. But I've been craving them recently, because let's face it...there's nothing like coming back from a run in the middle of summer like a popsicle.

Telling Tyler "pull out the popsicles, I want to take a picture" and hearing "...whoops"

Especially these ones: chocolate + chili + peanut butter + honey + milk/yogurt + salt + popsicle mold + freezer = Honey sweetened chocolate chili peanut butter popsicles. Clearly when it comes to dessert names, size matters.

Evidence of their deliciousness

I made this in the morning in under 10 minutes on a whim. Try them out. If you're hoping to make it vegan, use full fat coconut milk. If you want to make them a bit healthier / don't love super sweet things, cut down on the honey by half.


Chocolate Chili Peanut Butter Popsicle

0.25 cup honey
1 cup milk / yogurt / half and half
0.75 - 1 cup peanut butter
0.33 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp red chili powder / cayenne (or less if you want it less spicy)
1 tsp salt
Dash of cinnamon

Whisk together honey, milk, and peanut butter until there are no clumps. Then add in the cocoa powder, chili powder, salt, and cinnamon and mix until clumpless. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for 3-4 hours. Pop them out on a warm summer day and enjoy!

Frozen Banana Bites

So third year is over. That happened. I'm taking some time to process, but I'll probably write about it. Let's be real actually, I'm not taking time to process, I'm studying for the Step 2 Boards and shoving my eyeballs into Bob's Burgers. And looking at desserts. Buuut I don't have eggs.

Let's ignore that Whole Foods is a two minute walk away, and that Trader Joes is a 10 minute walk away. Let's ignore that and talk about Banana Bites instead. I bought these Gone Bananas bites from Trader Joes a while ago...and they are so delicious. I feel quite adorable eating them. I forgot to buy them on this latest run...sadly, but I had 3 bananas that were getting a little too mushy for me to want to eat. So I figured...why not make my own?

Well if I was going to do that, I might as well put peanut butter on them. And oh wait, I had leftover homemade butterscotch sauce...so why not put this on top?

And so this delicious monstrosity was created...two frozen bananas with peanut butter in the middle, topped with butterscotch sauce, covered in chocolate and frozen again. They. are. so. good.

They'd be amazing even without the butterscotch sauce, but it definitely adds to the flavor. Make these. They are amazing and don't take long.

Frozen Banana Bites

3-4 bananas, sliced a quarter inch thick (or really how thick or thin you want, I wouldn't go more than 1/2 an inch thick though)
Peanut Butter (I used Skippy)
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate pieces
1 tsp canola oil or coconut oil
Optional: Butterscotch sauce (see above link for recipe from smitten kitchen!)

Slice up your bananas, put them on a baking sheet that's covered in parchment paper, and freeze them for about an hour. Then put down a layer of peanut butter, and put down another banana piece (so it's banana, peanut butter layer, banana...or you can keep it banana and peanut butter alone) and re-freeze for about an 1-1.5 hrs.  Then put a thin layer of butterscotch sauce on top (again, optional...but oh so delicious). Re-freeze for an hour. Right before you pull them out, melt the chocolate in a double boiler here's how. The short of it is that you put on a pot of water to boil, put a heatproof bowl over it, put the chocolate in, and stir around as the steam melts the chocolate. When the chocolate is full and melted, add the oil...why? It's a shorthand trick to 'temper' the chocolate, so that when you dip stuff in it, instead of being soft in texture and dull looking, it gets that chocolate 'crunch' and shine.

Pull out the banana bites, cover them in chocolate, re-freeze for about an hour, and enjoy! You can store them in a plastic back for up 2 weeks in the freezer.