Product Review: Yonanas

Last Christmas, J bought me a Yonana. I have the regular version, which costs $49.99 on their website.

Yonanas is a product made by Dole – you know, they put out fruits and vegetables, etc. They also make Yonanas, which the website describes as “The healthy dessert maker”. I used to be addicted to ice cream. I ate a cupful nightly. I saw recipes for banana in a blender and I tried to make it, but it didn’t work out that great. J bought me Yonanas to try their one-ingredient ice cream.

Ingredients: Frozen banana.
That’s it.

So all you do is feed the frozen banana into the machine, and out pours a creamy substance with consistency similar to ice cream. But no cream, no ice. Just banana.

Even neater, you can add other frozen fruits and make different desserts. The Yonana came with a few recipes. Strawberries and bananas is a simple one. I liked it even better than the banana only!

The banana dessert alone is amazing, though. And so easy. I recommend peeling and cutting up the banana into a few pieces (I’ll do 4) before freezing. Just makes things even easier. Also, you are supposed to use a ripe banana.

I will warn though, cleaning a Yonana can be a little obnoxious. The machine breaks into several pieces so you can scrape out all the banana-y goodness; this also makes cleaning easier. You have to clean the pieces almost immediately because if creamy banana dries in all those nooks and crannies, it’s a major pain later.

These are the pieces you wash:

Regardless, I am in love with Yonanas and I still use it 6 months later. It’s small and easy to store. I like to use lots of bananas at once and put what I don’t eat in the freezer to save. That way I don’t have to clean the pieces of machine as often. (Cleaning really is the only complaint I have. I also dislike cleaning my blender.)

This is what one banana made, which looks small but it’s so creamy and rich it is a good amount:

Here’s 1 and a half bananas with 5 frozen strawberries, which was way too much to eat at one time:

I give Dole 5/5 stars for their Yonanas product, because the desserts made are healthy (as advertised) and delicious. Clean up takes time but that is expected, and clean up is made considerably easier by the parts that come apart. Also, as I mentioned, Yonanas is very easy to use. Love it!

 

*This post is not sponsored or promoted by Dole. I did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.*

 

Name Train DIY

For my friend’s son who loves trains, I started a project. They’ve recently moved and he has this new big boy room, and I went with the color scheme they’ve used already.

 

Started with orange and white striped 8.5″x11″ paper and trimmed down to 8″x10″ so it would fit in a frame I already had. I used my paper cutter for this.

Made some word art letters to print. I printed on regular paper because I don’t know if our printer would do well with construction paper. Instead of a solid line, I outlined the letters in dots so it would be less visible if I messed up the cut job.

I glued the white letters UPSIDE DOWN to the yellow construction paper. Didn’t use a ton of glue in case I wanted to peel the white piece off. Then I cut around the letters and flipped them over so the yellow side was RIGHT SIDE UP.

As I held the letters up to the background, it wasn’t a very good contrast. I took a black Sharpie and outlined the letters. This was the MOST stressful part of the entire process, and I did mess up on the middle of the O!

Glued down the yellow letters on the striped background.

Used a 3/4″ circle punch (from Michaels) to punch out 8 “wheels” on black construction paper, and glued them down (two wheels for each letter).

Cut a thin strip of black paper into pieces for the joining pieces between the letters.

Popped it in a frame- voila!

Not perfect but I am certainly proud and excited for him to have it!