chocolate banana bites with coffee granola + pistachios

24 Dec, 2025

I'm not the chef in the family. Because they keep me so well fed on a regular basis, I try to return the favor on the holidays (though one year for Thanksgiving, my brother made four entirely new dishes and still crushed it). Here's a small offering I made them :)

Coffee Granola

I started with my coffee granola, which I often make to sprinkle on açaí or yogurt bowls. This requires ~30 minutes in the oven and additional time to cool on the tray afterwards. I would recommend starting the next step (melting chocolate) once the coffee granola has come out of the oven and is starting to cool.

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp instant coffee
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup honey

optional:

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• brown sugar to taste

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
2. Dissolve the instant coffee in about 1/2 cup of hot water. Make sure to vigorously stir with a spoon to make sure all of the coffee grounds are dissolved.
3. Melt butter over medium heat in a saucepan.
4. Mix in all ingredients (including optional ones) except the rolled oats.
5. Mix in the oats.
6. Lay the oat mixture on a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet. The mixture should make a flat layer.
7. Bake for 30 minutes at 275 degrees.

Once baked, leave the granola out to sit and cool. Note that this recipe will make far more than needed for the banana bites. Also note that this granola has coffee so it WILL keep you awake... spoken from experience.

Chocolate Shell

The traditional method of melting chocolate to use for a chocolate shell is to double boil chocolate chips, which is also what I recommend (this seems more food safe than my method). However...

My friend had gifted me a bag of chocolate truffles, which I foolishly kept in one of my cabinets next to a pole that carries heat. It melted, and I found the perfect (delicious) use for it as dipping chocolate.

Assembling

I poured my chocolate into a bowl to use for dipping and prepared my bananas by slicing them into rounds.

At first, I tried to use a method I found online to slide the banana rounds onto my fork, then twirl it in the chocolate. If you slice the banana too thinly (as I did), the banana will just fall off. Therefore, an alternative method is to spoon chocolate over one side of the banana slice, flip it, and then spoon some more. Then, slide a fork under the banana slice, gently shake it to remove excess chocolate, and transfer the slice to a piece of parchment paper.

The chocolate will likely start to firm up while you're doing this, so I'd recommend leaving most of the chocolate over the double boiler, and having a separate "working" bowl of chocolate that's enough to coat ~10 banana pieces at a time. Microwaving the chocolate also works in a pinch.

After creating these slices, I crumbled bits of granola over the chocolate. I then finely chopped pistachios (a small handful) and sprinkled those over half of the bites.

Freezing

Now it's time to freeze em! I just popped them all into the freezer so the chocolate would harden. An optional step is also to remove them after about 10 minutes in the freezer to cut off any excess chocolate, and then put them back in the freezer. That allows them to be stored more compactly.

Pull the bites out of the freezer 5-10 minutes before eating!

There you have it! My favorite bites were the ones with more granola and pistachio, so that there was more textural variety.