Chocolate Dipped Frozen Bananas

Ingredients:

Ripe (but still firm, not overly ripe) bananas
Dark chocolate chips
Crushed nuts (optional)
popsicle sticks

Peel the bananas and cut them in half. Insert a popsicle stick into the end of each banana. Place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and freeze. Once frozen, you may place the banana popsicles in a zip lock bag and keep them in the freezer.

Melt the dark chocolate chips in a small bowl over a small pot of boiling water. Once the chocolate is completely melted, take one of the frozen banana pops and dip into the chocolate, coating it evenly.

If desired, immediately roll the popsicle in crushed peanuts.

These pops range from 160 - 220 calories each.

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How to calculate the exact calories for your pops:

Before you insert the stick into the banana half, weigh it and calculate it's calories. Then insert the stick and write the calories of the plain banana on the stick for future reference.

When ready to dip, first put the plain (undipped) frozen banana on the scale and find out how many grams it weighs. Then dip the banana in chocolate and weigh it after dipping. The difference in grams is the weight of the chocolate. Use the nutritional info on the chocolate chip package to determine the amount of calories in the chocolate. Add the chocolate calories to the banana calories you had previously written on the stick and you have the total calories for the pop!

If rolling in peanuts as well, use the same technique. After you calculate the calories for the banana and chocolate, weigh the pop again (prior to rolling in nuts) and then roll in nuts and weigh again. The difference is the weight of the nuts. Again, use the nutritional info on the package of nuts to calculate the number of calories in the nuts, and then add that figure to the calories of the chocolate and banana.