This is one of those recipes…
One of those recipes that’s impossible to stop eating until every last chocolate bite has disappeared. Rich dark chocolate, complemented by creamy banana filling…
I made two batches (for five of us who were watching the Olympics last night). One batch was just banana and a second batch was peanut butter banana, where I blended a big spoonful of crunchy peanut butter into the filling.
There were no leftovers.
Monkey See Monkey… Eat
The summer after I finished third grade, my family took a trip to Vermont and stopped at the Ben & Jerry’s factory to see how ice cream is made. (I think that same summer, we visited a brewery and got to see how beer is made. It was a very educational summer for me!)
After touring the factory came the best part: sampling ice cream. We tried chocolate, we tried Cherry Garcia, and finally we tried their #1 seller, Chunky Monkey. I decided this flavor was my favorite, mostly because I thought the name was funny. The tour guide then informed us that this particular product had a different name in Japan; it was simply called Banana Nut. Apparently, if you try to translate the name to Japanese, you get “Chunks of Monkey.”
Ever since that trip, whenever I see anything chocolate-and-banana flavored, my mind automatically thinks of chunks of monkey.
So… who’s hungry now? 
Chocolate Monkey Bites
- 1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup virgin coconut oil, melted
- 20-30 nunaturals vanilla stevia drops (or 3-4 tbsp liquid sweetener, such as agave)
- 1/2 a banana (see “nutrition info” link below for all substitution notes in this recipe)
- tiny pinch salt
- optional: 1-2 tbsp peanut butter (or pb2, or another nut butter)
Combine first three ingredients in a bowl and stir until it makes a chocolate sauce. Pour a little of the sauce (saving the rest for later) into the bottoms of cupcake liners, mini cupcake liners, or candy molds. Then freeze 8-10 minutes. Meanwhile, blend (or mash and stir with a fork) the banana, salt, and optional ingredients. Take liners out of the freezer and top each with banana mixture. Now evenly distribute the rest of the chocolate and re-freeze until solid. This recipe makes 9-10 mini cups (as shown in the photos).
View Monkey Bites Nutrition Facts
Link of the Day:
Can you do a recipe for just plain peanut butter cups?
I keep trying to find one and there is just no recipes anywhere!!!!
Or is it because it’s just peanut butter and chocolate….
hmmmm
Thank you for this amazing healthy blog!!!
Caramel pb cups!!
This recipe is awesome!!!! I love it because the healthier ingredients you use to the already healthy ingredients makes me feel so good about eating it! For example I used organic coconut oil, organic fair trade cacao powder, organic peanut butter. My favourite part is how it incorporates the very healthy cacao powder kind of like a dark chocolate but it evens out with the banana and peanut butter filling!
Highly recommended! Thanks:)
I just made these this evening and they are AMAZING!! I added peanut butter and a few cranberries and im having serious trouble not consuming the entire tray! Simply genuis Katie, will most definately be making these again tomorrow :3 <3
I was short on maple syrup, so thought I’d cheat and add just a little bit of brown sugar to sweeten the chocolate – big mistake! Lumpy mess…which I redeemed by mixing in the banana and PB, henceforth creating the most scrumptious fudge! I may get around to making these properly sometime, but I reckon my messed-up version is pretty great 🙂
Any way to use dry sweetener? I have a huge bag of splenda and want to use it.
I cant wait to try these! I love the idea of using protein powder with the banana. I wonder how orange extract would taste. I always loved the orange cream chocolates.
how about dark chocolate sea salt and lavender
With peanut butter and chocolate I think banana is the perfect combo, but if you’d like another idea then raspberry would be my second choice. It’s like a PBJ sandwich (I always hated grape jelly and did PBJ with raspberry, strawberry or apricot jam.)
Also, not related to PB, do you have a version of these cups with mint instead of PB? I love chocolate and mint together.
These look like bites with coconut in the middle of…where is it listed…don’t see it.
Or, is that the other stuff mixed together? 🙁
I just made some cashew/peanut butter cups with some homemade salted coconut sugar caramel in the middle. Seriously fabulous AND my kids have each requested their own batches for valentines day!