Frozen Chocolate dipped bananas

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wendy Buckner on September 14, 2010 at 4:06pm

Hi Karen! I do this at Farmer's Markets and it has been a huge hit for us! I just use a large crock pot to keep my melted chocolate in. I peel my bananas and stick them with popsicle sticks...then freeze. We do whole bananas and half bananas. When I go to the market I keep them in a cooler with some dry ice to keep them frozen. I asked a rep. from one of the chocolate manufacturers that we use about this before I attempted to do it. He suggested thinning our chocolate with 20% coconut oil because the chocolate would be really thick on the bananas otherwise. It has worked really well for us! We dip the bananas for each customer...keeping containers of toppings to roll each one in. Hope this helps!! ~Wendy

Permalink Reply by karen Palmer on September 14, 2010 at 6:02pm

Great thanks Wendy!! What kind of chocolate do you use.

Permalink Reply by Wendy Buckner on September 14, 2010 at 6:58pm

I use 50% dark chocolate...not bitter enough to deter any children...something everyone loves.

Permalink Reply by karen Palmer on September 15, 2010 at 3:22am

You have been a great help Wendy Thank you!!!

Permalink Reply by Wendy Buckner on September 16, 2010 at 1:30pm

You are very welcome! Forgot to mention that we wrap each one in parchment before freezing...kind of a given...but wanted to tell you. Happy to help out however I can! :)

Permalink Reply by karen Palmer on October 5, 2010 at 12:05pm

Hi Wendy, back again. I have been trying your ideas and i have a problem coating the bananas with nuts etc without leaving some of the chocolate in the topping trays. Is there a specific way you coat in the toppings that would help me. I really appreciate your help and everything has worked great so far.
The parchment paper seems to absorb the ice on the outside of the banana whilst freezing. Great idea!!

Permalink Reply by Wendy Buckner on October 5, 2010 at 12:43pm

Hi Karen! Seems like there will always be a few drips into the topping trays...I dip the banana and let the extra chocolate drip off into the chocolate pot, then, lay it down on the toppings and cover it up by using either gloved hands, or sometimes I even use a plastic scraper that I keep in the topping tray to cover it up (wearing gloves as well...) Laying the banana down in the topping may help to stick everything together... When covering the banana with the topping, I even kind of push them on it...to make sure I get a lot of them to stay on. At the end of the day we always have to refresh our toppings by sifting out all the chocolate and adding fresh to the trays.
I guess just make sure the bananas are frozen really well. The chocolate seems to set up pretty quickly if so. Our topping trays we use are basically plastic containers about the size of a shoebox. We keep about 2-3 inches of each topping in the containers and when we lie the bananas down in the container it seems to give the perfect amount of space to cover them with what is around it...hope you can visualize what I'm saying... I cover it and then press on the mound over the banana, then pull the banana out of the container...We serve them on fluted paper hotdog trays...
I hope this helps! It takes a while to get the hang of it...
Good luck! Hope you sell a ton of bananas!! :) ~Wendy

Permalink Reply by karen Palmer on October 6, 2010 at 3:44am

You have been an angel!!!
Thank you for all the info and I can visualize it all. I will practice all this so we get it right.
Good business to you too!!! :)
Karen

Permalink Reply by Leena Caligiure on July 11, 2011 at 10:31pm

Hi Wendy and Karen,

We were thinking about selling frozen bananas at our shop as well and I was wondering how you keep chocolate in temper in the crock pot. I thought the chocolate would set up too quickly if I used couveture so I was considering using confectioner's coating  but didn't want to compromise taste.

Thanks! Any advice would be helpful!