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:
These look so addicting!!!
Hey, Love this one. I’ve boon thinking lately about a desert my mom used to make around the holidays: “7 layer cookies” I LOVE THEM! I was wondering if you had some healthy substiturtion ideas. Here’s the way my mom made it. She just layered the ingredients in the pan in this order then baked at 350 for 25 min.
1 stick butter melted in the bottom of a pan
1 1/2 cups graham crackers
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup butterscotch chips
Any ideas would be helpful.
Thanks so much,
Andrea
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I keep thinking about adapting this recipe with Katie’s graham crackers and strawberry frosting/mousse:
http://www.thekitchn.com/summer-recipe-nobake-strawberr-117900
Sounds kind of similar, other than the no-bake part… Maybe a starting point?
I have one going in the cookbook :).
Maybe I will have to post it here too!
I’d love to see some kind of raspberry creme or mock caramel. I haven’t had a Snickers bar in years…
I needed the laugh this post just gave me. Chunks of monkey. Made me laugh to tears. The dessert looks yummy by the way.
Yum! What about a white chocolate coated peanut butter cup or cinnamon raisin oatmeal cookie peanut butter cup!!
The two Brands PB Crave or I love Peanut Butter Co. may be an optional filling for some of you other Peanut butter aholics. They have flavors like white chocolate with raspberry PB, cookie dough flavored peanut butter, cinnamon raisin, dark chocolate, etc. The best part is both these brands are much healthier than our beloved commercial brands.
Wow, now I really wish I liked Peanut Butter. Those flavours sound amazing, but I’m just not a PB fan at all 🙁
Do you like other nut butters? Cashew, almond, and pecan butter all taste much different from peanut butter, so you could always sub one of those!
Katie, do you have metric measures (gram… ) for this recipe too? That would be awesome…
cocoa is 5g per tablespoon (so 25 for the recipe). Oil is about 15g per tablespoon, and half a banana… 40ish grams?
Ohhh these look good and I like the simple ingredient list! Chunky monkey is really good, except I reckon those chocolate pieces get a bit too much quickly- the walnuts and ice cream I could eat forever though!
Perhaps a Cinnamon Roll cup. Would that even be possible? I think a smoothie cup would taste pretty good too.
Also, I made these yesterday and had my first one this morning. They’re really good, especially with super dark chocolate. I love how smooth the chocolate got.
Thanks for the yummy recipe!
I think s’mores peanut butter cups would be amazing. Could you figure out how to make them healthy?
PS-Love the chunks of monkey comment. Made me laugh out loud.