Chocolate marble nicecream popsicles are marbled with both vanilla and chocolate cream and dipped in dark chocolate and popped quinoa. Such a healthy dessert!
Chocolate Marble Nicecream Popsicles.
Chocolate marble nicecream popsicles. These are made with delicious homemade cream, molded into a fun pop. And sprinkled with popped quinoa, high in protein and crunch!
So how are these made? With bananas of course. This recipe is actually one of my first experiences using frozen banana to create a healthy frozen, ice-cream-like treat.
I was quite suspicious it would taste like banana, but it doesn’t! A friend told me that was the case, that when bananas are frozen, they don’t taste like bananas. And she was quite correct.
Now, to be honest, the treat doesn’t have the fatty quality of dairy-ice-cream, especially well-known commercial varieties.
But I enjoyed the lightness and knowing once I was done eating, I wouldn’t be falling asleep from unhealthy-fat and sugar-overload.
Plus, it is quite exciting to have control over ingredients. I sprinkled these with popped quinoa but I could have chosen dried fruit or chocolate shards. Customization of treats is always very exciting to me. Haha, I guess I don’t live that exciting a life. And actually, quinoa is an awesome choice for desserts. Read on why.
How Healthy is Quinoa
Quinoa is often listed as a grain, but it is really a seed. And a seed with an incredible nutritional profile.
Pronounced “KEEN-wah”, it is one of few plant foods that offers a complete protein profile. That is, it supplies all nine of the essential amino acids your body cannot produce.
If that’s not enough of a good thing, it is also a terrific source of fiber, iron, zinc, copper, thiamin and vitamin B6, potassium and magnesium, phosphorus, manganese and folate. Specifically 1/2 cup of quinoa yields 4 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber.
How many desserts can boast that!
In fact, the next time I make these, I might toss in 1/2 cup of cooked quinoa and see how that affects texture.
Of course you can pour the mixture into any form – popsicle mold, candy mold, paper cups, ice cube trays.
If you want to use the small oval mold I used, I link to it in ingredients.
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Chocolate Marble Nicecream Pops
Ingredients
Vanilla Popsicle Mixture
- 4 bananas sliced and frozen
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 4 tbsp coconut butter
- pinch of salt
Chocolate Additions
- 2 tbsp cacao powder
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
To Serve
- 1/4 cup popped quinoa
Useful Equipment
Instructions
Prep
- Overnight, freeze peeled, chopped bananas. The next day, let them sit out for 10 minutes before blending.
Make the base mixture
- Blend up all the ingredients from the vanilla ingredient list. You want a fairly stiff mixture, like soft serve.
Make chocolate mixture
- Take 1/2 of the mixture out and pour into the mold. Add the cacao and maple syrup to the remaining mixture in the blender. Blend again until just incorporated. You can a few tbsp of milk if you need to help the texture be pourable. You want the chocolate texture to be more liquidy than the vanilla so that when you pour the chocolate mixture into the mold, it fills in the areas the vanilla portion didn't.
Fill the popsicle molds
- Spoon the vanilla mixture into the molds, filling them half way.Pour the chocolate mixture in, filling the mold all the way.Insert sticks right away (with these molds you can insert the sticks before freezing because these molds remain horizontal, no chance of the sticks tipping as with vertical popsicle molds) and freeze overnight.
- When you are ready to serve, melt some chocolate in a microwave, and quickly dip or drizzle, and sprinkle with popped quinoa for added protein and crunch. I bought my quinoa pops here, but you can make your own - just dry saute rinsed, uncooked quinoa until it browns and smells nutty.
Storage
- Store these pops in an airtight container for up to three months in the freezer.
Nutrition
Dee Dine is founder of Green Smoothie Gourmet, a plant based recipe blog, and author of the recent cookbook, Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients . On this blog you’ll find incredibly easy recipes with hidden veggies for anyone wanting to eat healthier, regardless of diet. Dee has graduate degrees in biology, immunology and journalism. More about Dee Dine here.
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