Easy & Healthy Vegan Banana Fudgesicles (no Popsicle molds required!)

Here’s my sitch with bananas: I really enjoy eating one in the morning with my oatmeal, but I’m super picky about the ripeness level. They need to have no green left, but no brown yet. It’s a textural thing, and they also start to get too sweet for my taste if I wait too long to eat them.

But as you have probably heard elsewhere on the internet, frozen/ripe bananas take on properties that are borderline magical. They provide natural, whole-food sweetness. They get insanely smooth and creamy while also having body. My love.

So ever since I learned this trick, instead of throwing out the bananas that are too ripe for me, I wait for them to be mostly brown, and then pop them in the freezer, peel and all. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

If you, too, are hoarding ripe bananas in your freezer, and are suffering a chocolate craving, you can be eating these fudgesicles in less than an hour from now, since they call for only three other required ingredients, all of which you probably have on hand. Best of all, they do, of course, work in a Popsicle mold, but a Dixie cup and a stir stick (or two) will get the job done just fine. Here’s how!

Easy & Healthy Vegan Banana Fudgesicles
These exact ingredient quantities made 5 Dixie cup-size fudgesicles, at just 50 plant-strong calories each. The recipe is easily scaled.

2 ripe bananas from the freezer, peels removed (unfrozen bananas will work; freezer time will increase)
3 tb unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup plain, unsweetened nondairy milk, preferably almond
1/4 tsp salt (NOT optional)
Optional ingredients: 1/2 tsp vanilla (brings out sweetness), 1 tb clear liquor (makes them a bit softer), added sweetener to taste (I did not need!), 1 tb ground psyllium husk (helps the ingredients gel more)
Dixie cups (5), or Popsicle molds (??)
Stir sticks or Popsicle sticks (wooden get the least cold)

Give it a whiz and then twiddle your thumbs. In a blender or food processor, combine all ingredients, including optional ingredients if using. Distribute into cups, filling about 2/3 to the top, and place a stir stick, or two bundled stir sticks, in the center sticking up. Since the banana was already frozen, the sticks should stay in place. If not, set your timer for 20 minutes into the freezing process and adjust the stir sticks at that time.

After about an hour, these treats will be frozen enough to enjoy (if you started from frozen banana). For a firmer texture, freeze longer. Eat ASAP, within a couple of days.