I was having a monstrous chocolate craving yesterday and just didn’t feel like a candy bar. After looking around my kitchen I realized I had everything I needed for these babies. My sister Rivka’s Jerusalem-Elegance (on facebook) did this first for a fancy dinner, and I have really wanted to try it ever since. Believe it or not, these are better than most truffles I have tried, probably because the fresh cold creamy banana taste comes through over the sweet dark chocolate really nicely, and nothing is too overpowering or repetitive like I find so many mass produced truffles to be. Also, IMPORTANT!!! the better the chocolate you use, the better these will taste, naturally. So use Ghirardelli or some other higher end dark chocolate for really great results.

Ingredients:

200g dark or semi sweet chocolate

1 teaspoon canola oil

2-3 Medium sized bananas, ripe, but not overripe, sliced in 1 inch slices, and frozen for 1 hour.

A small saucepan

A medium sized heat proof glass bowl (something non-porous like pyrex) that will fit on top of the saucepan without falling inside.

50g chopped toasted almonds (I just buy whole shelled almonds and chop and toast myself)

Non Food Items:

A spatula

Baking paper for lining the tray

A cookie sheet or baking tray

Method:

1) Set up a double boiler using the saucepan with water in in, and the glass bowl on top.

2) Melt the chocolate with an added tsp. of canola oil for shininess.

3) When it’s melted, quickly* dip banana slices into chocolate using 2 forks, shake off excess, and then line them up on a baking sheet covered in baking paper.

*Quick note: If you try dipping them one by one into the chocolate (like I did) too much liquid from the bananas gets into the mix and gums up the melted chocolate. So go fast, or do it in batches of about 6 at a time. If you have ever accidentally gotten water in a melted chocolate mixture you were making you know what I am talking about. If this does happen, you can save the chocolate by scraping it out onto a sheet of baking paper, adding some toasted nuts, crushed candy canes or other candy or dried fruit you have on hand, pressing it down into a bark, and freezing it until hard. This was a yummy byproduct of this experiment, and saved me from flinging a bowl of hot (presumably unusable wasted) chocolate against the wall. I also tried it afterwards a different way, pouring the chocolate over a bunch of sliced bananas, but it was even worse, not sticking to the bananas at all. So please let me know if you come up with a better way to do this, because its fine for a quick treat to make a few, but if you want to make say, 30, for a party, I can see this getting complicated.

4) I toasted some chopped almonds for the top as well, they really added to the flavor, and tried a few with colored sprinkles because I just love them that much. The almond ones were better, but I’ll bet kids would flip over the sprinkly ones. Add toppings, then chill in the fridge until you are ready to serve them. The chocolate melts in your hand, so eat quick! My husband, G, was so sad when I told him about the last time I had them without him, so he ate almost all of them when he got home.

Update: just started watching Arrested Development, (I know, I’m WAY behind) what a fun show, and I love the whole Bluths bananas storyline. I’m going to make these again for the next time I sit down for a marathon catch up session. Enjoy!