Cocoa Pops Recipe

On Sunday, we started our Provident Living Challenge—backstory: our bishop at our church gave us a challenge a few months ago to go 30 days without grocery shopping by living off of what we have in our house. Why would anyone do this? If a natural disaster, job loss or any other type of calamity occurred, we would have to make due with what we have. This is an opportunity to see what works for our family, what we run out of quickly and what we should stock up on—without there actually being a disaster. We’ve had several weeks to prepare and because we won’t be going to the grocery store for 30 days, I expected a lot of our produce to be frozen or canned instead of fresh.

One of the things we have been doing for the challenge is preparing and freezing a lot of snacks and meals to save time since we will be cooking three meals every day. My kiddos lovelovelove to snack. And as much as we endorse goldfish in this house, I wanted some healthier (and tasty!) options as well.

I’ve been pinning lots of healthy recipes in the hopes that a few would be kiddo friendly, and Reagan was totally sold on these—“chocolate popsicles”. I made a few adjustments to the ingredients based on what we had on hand, measured and threw them in a blender and put them into popsicle bags before freezing. Super easy! And the girls may or may not have eaten one for breakfast this morning… and I didn’t feel bad about it because it has bananas and milk and peanut butter!

Cocoa Pops Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 semi-ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup of unsweetened cocoa
• 2 tablespoons of milk
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Directions

Measure out ingredients. Blend in a food processor or mixer until smooth. Pour into popsicle bags or molds and freeze for a minimum of one hour before eating.

Fills four popsicle bags.

How do you sneak healthy substitutes into kiddo-friendly foods?!