~~by Nikki

Ok, so here’s the deal. Life has been sort of crazy lately. And I’ve been promising these bon-bon’s FOREVER. You’ve lost faith in the fact that I’ll ever post them. I understand. If I were you, I would have too.

So first off let me apologize for that! The hold up is that I don’t have a pic. I don’t have a pic because life has been crazy! It’s an endless cycle!

BUT we have an opportunity here to do something fun. For those of you willing to try your hand at this recipe, I am willing to reward you for doing so!

Yes, people, I am *paying* you to do my job for me.

So here’s how it’s going to work. The recipe is below. Try it out. E-mail me if you run into any difficulties. Jazz it up! Make it your own! Then snap a pic and send to me.

What’s in it for you? Welllll…since my life has been rough, many of my generous hearted friends have sent along goodies ranging from protein powders I could never afford to buy myself to syrups to snacks. I have waaaaaay too much stuff. I try stuff before I recommend it to you all though. But having a gamillion protein bars might not be the best thing for my continued sucess.

SOOOOO…those who make the bon-bons and submit a picture will get the opportunity to hand pick a care package (which I WILL pack with mine own hands instead of violating child labor laws like I usually do) of things from my arsenal…erm, stockpile of protein goodies.

Ok, so deadlines. One week from today…which would be August 31. So, just to re-iterate, three easy steps.

1. Make the bon-bons
2. Snap a pic of the bon-bons
3. E-mail the bon-bon pic to me (along with your OH name or FB name)

By sending me your pic you are also giving me permission to post here on the blog and on our Facebook page. All entrants will be plugged into a random name selector and I will post the name of one winner on Sept. 1st.

You game? Here’s the recipe:

Edited to add: My wonderful friend Dee made them this evening and had some trouble. I quickly learned why. I ommitted a whole chunk of the recipe (damn delete button). I’ve added it back in italics along with some tips from Dee.

Nik’s Protein Banana Bon-Bon’s

Ingredients

3 large, ripe bananas, chopped into one inch long “nuggets” (Dee suggests smaller since you are eating them frozen)

1 cup unflavored 0% Greek yogurt

½ package sugar-free chocolate fudge pudding mix

2 scoops chocolate protein powder

1 tablespoon Splenda

3 pumps sugar-free Butter Rum syrup (if you don’t have any, whatever you like will do)

2 tablespoons of either soy flour, Carbquick or whole wheat pancake mix

A box of tooth picks

Directions

In a bowl, mix together yogurt and protein powder. Mixture will be thick.

Add pudding mix and mix again. Mixture will be even thicker. Add syrup and Splenda and mix some more!

Place flour or pancake batter in a baggie and shake the banana pieces in them and shake them until well coated. Trust me, in the end you won’t taste this but you’ll thank yourself for doing it.

Place banana slices on toothpicks and submerge in mixture (this may be easier done using tongs) then transfer onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or wax paper, which is what I used – Dee didn’t use anything and said she wishes she did!)

Once done you can either leave the toothpicks in (in which case you’d have a mini-frozen banana pop) or take them out (for a bon-bon).

Freeze for two hours or until coating is set. When going to eat it might be good to let them sit at room temperature for a few minutes to soften up a bit. My girls personally liked them just from the freezer. If your banana is super ripe it should be soft to bite into. Use your best judgement!

I tried and tried to tweak this so you only have enough coating for the bananas and somehow I ALWAYS have more than that. With my diva chocolate lovers, though, this is not a big problem because…the coating…when you put it in the fridge…makes the most awesomest chocolate mousse EVER!!! Thick, rich, creamy and delicious. Just watch your portion sizes! A half a cup of this stuff is more than enough with all the protein it has. With a dollop of whippage…OF COURSE.

And of course…for you stats people, here is the LiveStrong diary entry! (even if you don’t use LiveStrong this will show you the stats for this). For our purposes a serving is 2 bon-bons.