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:
I am in “twisted” mode today so my request is for pineapple and-or mango with coconut and banana in WHITE CHOCOLATE, please!!!!! Of course, if you HAVE to stay with chocolate, make it dark with cherries, coconut, and almond butter!
I think the guide was pulling your leg. “Chunky Monkey” would just be in katakana (Japanese syllabary generally used for foreign words) because we don’t “translate” most flavor names or loan words literally. It’s just チャンキーモンキー (chankii monkii): http://mognavi.jp/food/31796
Hmmm… that’s weird. But it is true that they changed it: I googled it and found this: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2001-05-30/entertainment/18180658_1_ice-cream-ben-jerry-cherry-garcia/2
Would that article line up with your tour date? Maybe the guide had read it!
As a translator, if I were trying to translate the flavor name it literally, that’d be awful–you want to convey the sense there are chunks of things that are related to a monkey, but there’s a double reading of “fat monkey.” In that sense, they’re right that it doesn’t translate. You don’t want to call your ice cream “fat monkey.”
Now I’m just spinning my linguistic wheels, but imagine that corporate asked the translator how to say “chunky,” the translator responded that it’s literally either “fat/big” (太い、大きい), “having thick parts” (分厚い), or “having clumps” (塊の入っている), which, in this case, would turn out like Monkey’s Clumps or Clumpy Monkey because of the way the adjective-noun modification works. Fun fact: Adjectives in English are often nouns and verbs in Japanese.
Conclusion: Perhaps the “Chunks of Monkey” never made it past the initial marketing stage and the translator kept her/his job but had to explain why it’d go with chankii monkii. If it’s like the Baskin Robbins flavors, they usually have a loan-word name and then an explanation. Incidentally, this is way the banana-nut ice cream at one of the places in Kanazawa is also called.
Fun fact 2: This is also the reason Katamari Damacy is not translated into English. It’s a visual pun (塊魂) that means “Clump Soul.” Also a bad name for ice cream.
Fun fact 3: There is a seasonal BR flavor (or was in 2005) called “Baseball Nuts”（behsubohru nattsu) that was vanilla with raspberry ribbons and a variety of nuts. It was available in July – August because of the national high school tournament. That one will never make it to the US….
Thanks for citing the source and sorry for writing a book here!
You really can’t go wrong with the chocolate/pb/banana combo… with a little sea salt sprinkled on top of course! I’d love to make some sort of “healthy” strawberry or cherry filled chocolate cups… hmm…
Definitely need to try these out! Peanut butter cups are one of my most favourite things ever! Throw some banana in there, I am totally sold!
ok my 2cents is to add kahlua to the pb banana and chocolate for a flavor extravaganza.
Oh my God. My roommate in college was Japanese, and she definitely called that flavor “Monkey Chunk”. It all makes sense now.
Wow, just made these and I have to say…AMAZING!! Love to follow your healthy and tasty dessert blog, keep those great recipes coming please!
Love the look of these chocolate monkey peanut butter bites! I would love to see peanut butter raspberry bites-gluten free, please?
Why are these so good? I guess this is one of those things you just don’t question. These will forever be in my freezer. I used Hersheys dark unsweetened and sweetened slightly with coconut nectar. I tried PB& banana and just PB. Can’t wait to buy almonds to make almond butter and try that next! I have already started my own list of different fillings to try…….
peanut butter with rice cripies (kind like a crunch bar but with peanut butter and then coated in dark chocolate) or maybe peanut butter and strawberry/cherry jam covered in the delicious chocolatey coating…? Just throwing out some ideas.