Yogurt-dipped banana pops

It happened last week.  As I stood in the aisle of Giant Eagle, surrounded by hundreds of food items I could not use to make a snack for my daughter’s preschool class, I developed an intense hatred for food allergies.

No, my daughter doesn’t have allergies.  But because of the prevalence of nut allergies among our children, her school is nut-free.  Add a classmate’s dairy allergy, an edict to make only healthy foods, and a goal of preparing the snack with the children to the mix and you have a snack enigma: what can you make?

No doubt you’ve encountered such issues if you have a young child.  It is a headache, to say the least.  But when you overcome the obstacles, you can walk the halls of your preschool with your head held high, because you have conquered the near impossible: delivering a snack that is allergen-free (from multiple angles), and passed the lips of quirky preschoolers whose palates are, to be sure, entirely unpredictable and maddeningly inconsistent.

Here’s my free pass to you: try yogurt-dipped frozen banana pops.  Banana pops are fun and easy to make, and my daughter’s classmates devoured them.  Enough said.

Yogurt-dipped banana pops:

1. Peel bananas
2. Cut each banana in half
3. Insert popsicle sticks into center of each banana
4. Cover a cookie sheet with wax paper, place bananas on paper and cover.  Freeze overnight
5. Take to school:  bananas, a large container of vanilla yogurt (soy), nut-free granola, and a plate 
6. Spread granola out on plate
7. Write each child’s name on the popsicle sticks. 
8. Have children dip their bananas in the yogurt
9. After dipping, ask each child to roll his banana in the granola
10. Return bananas to tray and re-freeze for about 15 minutes