Introducing a new segment on the Mid-Century Menu: Vintage Recipes for Kids! Now that Alex is old enough to be interested/help out/make a huge mess in the kitchen, I thought I would take the time to do some vintage children’s recipe tests with her and see how she likes being a guinea pig. I mean…how she likes testing recipes with me.
This week we are making some banana popsicles.
Chocolate Pudding Covered Frozen Bananas!
AuthorRetroRuth
From Fort Worth Star Telegram, 1970
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Make instant pudding with milk according to package directions. Peel bananas, cut in half if desired, insert sticks and dip into thickened pudding. Leave plain or roll in nuts or coconut as desired. Place on waxed paper on a cookie sheet and freeze immediately.
Ingredients
Directions
Make instant pudding with milk according to package directions. Peel bananas, cut in half if desired, insert sticks and dip into thickened pudding. Leave plain or roll in nuts or coconut as desired. Place on waxed paper on a cookie sheet and freeze immediately.
When I first saw this recipe, I thought it was genius. As an 80’s kid, pretty much all my frozen confection dreams are about pudding pops. Well, maybe there is little bit of dreaming leftover for Push Pops, but that’s pretty much all the dreaming I’ve got. So when I ran across this recipe, it made my heart jump with joy and I knew I wanted to try this out with Alex.
Ready to make banana pops!
And the background is pretty much real life around here. Kids.
Anyway, notice the pint glass in on the table. I didn’t get to snap a picture because of the mess, but we put the chocolate pudding in the glass and dipped the bananas a la Alton Brown’s Corn Dog recipe.
Also, if you haven’t made chocolate bananas in a while, or ever, just be sure that you don’t hesitate when you are jamming that stick in. Do it once and that’s that. If you hesitate or backtrack your banana will get loose and drop off the stick during dipping. We lost three half-bananas before I figured this out.
During dipping, I immediately noted a downside to this idea. It was hard to get a good, even coating of pudding, especially once the pudding thickened up. It had a tendency to pull the banana off the stick with suction-like ferocity using the glass method. Dipping in a bowl or spooning was not the way to go either and resulted in uneven coating. In the end, we started out dipping in the glass, holding onto the banana as we pulled it out, then spooning extra pudding over the fingerprints.
“Mama, you are making a big mess. Your hands are all messy.”
“It’s okay, it’s part of the fun. We can wash up afterwards. Just keep dipping.”
“Okay. I don’t want messy hands, though.”
“It will be fine. It’s just chocolate pudding.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
This was my moment of Mom-Spiration: I layered the failed bananas with the leftover pudding and toppings and popped that in the freezer to eat with a spoon. After I did it, I realized that I probably should have waited until the pudding layer froze on the dipped bananas and gave them another dip. Ah well, next time.
“Are the popsicles ready yet, Mama?”
“No, not yet. They will be ready when Daddy comes home from work.”
“Okay.”
Three beats of silence.
“Mama, is Daddy home from work yet?”
“No, not yet. Daddy will be home from work when the popsicles are ready.”
“10 cents gets you nuts.”
“Stop screwing around and just eat them.”
“How are they?”
“Okay. Mostly I just taste the banana.”
“So, Alex. Is it good?”
“It tastes like a banana. But it’s cold.”
The Verdict: Banana
From The Tasting Notes –
This recipe gets all the points for being fun and not requiring any cooking. Alex was able to catch on pretty quickly to what we were doing and why. Once I got the hang of dipping, it was pretty simple and Alex was able to help a lot. It was messy, but in a fun way. On the sort-of downside, these mostly just tasted like frozen bananas. The pudding layer wasn’t thick enough to really get the chocolate tasted across, and so it wasn’t as concentrated of a chocolate flavor as dipping them straight in melted chocolate. The bananas with the toppings were best, the coconut one was actually pretty good. What ended up being really good was the frozen reject pudding bowl. Throw a graham cracker crust on that thing and you’ve got a killer frozen pie.
Overall, Alex gives this recipe a thumbs up! She had fun making them, and loves frozen bananas.
Those look like so much fun and are a healthy alternative to popsicles.
I am tempted to make these with a change: decrease the amount of milk in the instant pudding. My thought would be that it would be thicker and adhere to the banana better by “frosting” instead of dipping the banana. Also, reducing the milk may help the chocolate flavor be more pronounced. Most chocolate covered bananas I’ve experienced use a dark or semisweet chocolate.
I’ll have to give this a whirl. Thanks!
They sure look better than the ones on Arrested Development!
Looks like fun.
The chocolate pudding puts me in mind of a kid-friendly product we had back in the 60’s: Shake-a Pudd’n. (Now it wasn’t exactly environmentally friendly because a major part of the advertising gimmick was that you got to throw away the containers. You can find the old product ads on YouTube.) It was simple to make, and it was great fun.
A couple of years ago, I began thinking about Shake-a Pudd’n and how much I enjoyed it as a kid so I decided to make my own version: instant pudding, milk, small mason jars. It was easy enough to split the package into 4 servings and to figure the proper amount of milk to add to each. Put the mix and the milk in the jar, tighten the lid, shake it up. (A plastic container would, of course, be safer for small hands to shake.)
You know what? It’s still fun 50 years later.
“Ten cents gets you nuts.” Classic.
Sorry, but I can’t stop laughing; those bananas look positively obscene!
Your little girl is magic! Sooooooo adorable! I’ve loved watching her grow up. What a sweetie! 🙂 🙂 🙂
These look like fun. I am going to try putting the stick in the banana and freezing them first. The pudding might stick better.
I was also thinking that I will cut the bananas in half and make smaller treats. Then I can have one with nuts and one with coconut!!
I think I’d rather just mix the pudding, bananas, and toppings in a bowl, freeze for a bit, and eat it that way!