Baby Shirazi Fudgesicles

Baby Shirazi was born on 16th December, 2005. It was a cold but sunny day and since we chose the day, we had the spent the previous night on tenterhooks, knowing well that at this time tomorrow we would be first time parents. I cooked for my parents in law, who were due the same day as the delivery, I remember I made ‘Chicken Khas-e-Kalinga’, a recipe my mom picked up from a hotel she ate at, ages ago! Baby Shirazi was born via C-section at around quarter past 3 in the afternoon and I was smitten from the moment I saw her. I watched my surgery in a ceiling mirror and there has been nothing grosser and more magical than that. She was a big girl, who has grown up to be delicate and petit, but one thing was certain, she had a voracious appetite from the time she was born. Touch wood. We wanted a child that loved food as much as we did and had the spirit for living like we do. We are truly blessed.

Since I brought her up pretty much by the book, Ally didn’t have much of the usual first foods that Indian kids have, instead she started on pureed fruits, soft tart shells, homemade pasta’s and soft, chewy cookies and ‘rusks’. We have a picture of her gnawing on a pork chop when she was little over a year old! Ally did have the usual ‘Khichdi’ (lentils and rice boiled together) but she wanted hers with slices of tomato or cucumber, once she was old enough to ask for pickles, she did! So now we had 3 foodies in the house, which meant a lot more improv work for mommy.

Ally is almost 5 years old now and loves cooking and baking with me. She can spend hours with a ball of dough, she can mix a bowl full of batter and she is thrilled when she is asked to crack eggs! One of her favourite things to do is cook kid stuff for herself. So she and I decided to combine two of her favourite flavours to make her a new summer snack/dessert. Ally loves bananas and she loves chocolate. So we decided to do something fun with those two ingredients. We also wanted something easy, cold and well ...easy! so here is what we did!

Baby Shirazi Fudgsicles

2 ripe bananas mashed well
½ cup of fresh cream
½ cup of milk
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp Hershey’s chocolate sauce, we have used others, they work as well. Best is fudge lava, that’s room temperature chocolate fudge, this has a higher concentration of cocoa mass so it freezes better.
Alternatively
1 cup of chocolate pudding

To Freeze:

Ice cream sticks
4 small cups or bowls/popsicle moulds

Make a milkshake of the bananas and milk. Stir in the cream and sugar, you can blend the sugar if you like; we don’t mind its crunchiness in the final product. This mix should be pretty thick. Fill into the four cups/moulds, now with a teaspoon, swirl the fudge over the mix, very gently use a thin butter knife to create swirls that go deeper into the mix. Put in the freezer, after around 5-6 minutes; put the sticks in the centre. I tried doing it before freezing, the sticks always get slanted. The fudgsicles are usually done in 3-4 hours. If you have time and energy, whip the banana, milk and cream mix, the fudgsicle’s turn out less icy and creamier.
We do a lot of variants of this popsicle, kids love to be involved, the idea is also to try and impart some level of responsibility ... I’d rather she learns like this than from some odd textbook!