Friday Favorites – Frozen Pops Edition

It all started with the pink birthday soup.

Kidzilla had a pink birthday party (again) this summer. One of the items she selected for her menu was a very pink chilled berry soup. I included it in the Summer Squash/Berry Bonus Soup of the Week post not too long ago.

Our guests loved the soup. But because I’m me and I nearly always panic about having enough food for a party, I made far too much for the number of people who were here. That soup became our first homemade ice pops of the summer. They were awesome.

Since then, we’ve made several rounds of homemade pops. These were all Internet finds and I’m pretty sure they’ve all made it to my Desserts and Sweets board on Pinterest. We’ve all enjoyed making (and eating) them so much, we decided to give them the Friday Favorites spot this week.

These are our first five flavors, in no particular order.

1. Triple Berry. Remember this one is actually a soup, but the leftovers worked perfectly for frozen pops. Berries, Greek yogurt, avocado, lime juice…if you like berries and cream, whip up a batch of these pink pops. We followed this one precisely as written…except for the part where I tripled the recipe. You can find the recipe at www.debbiekoenig.com. Oh, and just for the record…this works perfectly for a breakfast smoothie as well.

2. Orange Julius. When I was a kid, I loved Orange Julius. Loved them. Sadly, I haven’t seen a Julius shop in our area in about ten years (that’s probably a good thing, though). This recipe comes pretty darn close to the original Julius taste, and potentially with fewer calories since there is no mystery sweetener involved here. You can grab the recipe at www.thebearfootbaker.com. We made one exception to this recipe – we had tangerines to use so we squeezed them and substituted that for the orange juice. Other than that, we followed the recipe as written, including the powdered sugar. Why? Well, mostly because the Fab Hub purchased a five-pound bag of it at some point when I only needed enough for a small batch of icing. The taste was nearly identical to the original Orange Julius. I would make these again, but would definitely swap out the sugar for honey or agave.

3. Watermelon Mint. These came to us via Pinterest from www.grillgrrrl.com. They were awesome. It calls for half of a large watermelon, but we happened to have one nice-sized baby watermelon on hand that worked just fine. We skipped the sugar completely on this one because the watermelon itself was more than sweet enough.

4. Avocado Lime.  I found a pin on Pinterest that looked great…but ended up being a photo only, no recipe. (I hate that!) So I dug around on the Internet until I found these. You can grab the original recipe at http://cookingstoned.tv but I adapted these a bit. I skipped the simple syrup mostly because I didn’t really want sugar in the pops. I put in a comparable amount of water and maybe a tablespoon (or two?) of honey just to give it a little sweetness. Skipped the fresh tarragon leaves only because we didn’t have any and dried wasn’t going to cut it for something like this. Would I make it with the tarragon? Sure. But these ended up being quite good without it.

5. Honeydew Lime. I think of all the flavors we’ve done so far, this is the favorite. These came from a Pinterest pin that will take you to http://www.topdessertrecipes.net. It’s smack in the middle of a slideshow with 25 different ice pop recipes. The recipe is a bit vague and I suspect needs to be adjusted – it calls for 2/3 cup of lime juice twice. Even once that’s a pretty big dose of lime, so we changed this up a bit and mostly used the recipe as inspiration. The final product ended up being a Vitamix® container full of honeydew, a tablespoon or two of honey, and juice of one particularly large and juicy lime. We skipped the sugar and I’m sure our lime juice was not 2/3 cup. It was perfect. Kidzilla and Fab Hub liked this one so much we made it again right away after they inhaled the entire first batch.

On the left, honeydew lime popsicles. On the right, avocado lime with coconut milk at the base. You pour a little of that in at the end so it’s on top as the pops freeze and you end up with a very cool and tasty effect when the pops are frozen.

OK, let’s talk molds. We use these twin pop molds from Tovolo. We found them at Bed Bath and Beyond and they work very well. You can make four twin pops or break them apart for eight single pops. I like having the option. They come with a very cool little stand to keep them upright in the freezer while the pops are doing their thing. They were about ten bucks for a set. We bought two sets and they have more than paid for themselves.

Even better than saving some cash is the fact that I can completely control what is – or isn’t – in these pops. With the exception of the powdered sugar in the Julius, these have been plain old simple ingredients – no sugar, no junk, and no unpronounceable weird stuff. So when Zilla or the Fab Hub want to grab another one, I don’t have to freak out about how much sugar she’s had or whether he’s over-snacking. It’s fruit. Knock yourselves out.

As for quantity, well, the yield from the recipes I’ve looked at is as varied as the number of recipes out there. Some of these made just enough for our two sets of eight; some were a little too large so we had a quick drink of fresh watermelon juice or whatever. And how much stuff will fill your molds depends on the size and number of molds – you just have to experiment a little.

Homemade pops take almost no time at all. Dump the stuff in your blender or Vitamix®, puree, pour, and try to wait patiently for about ten hours until they’re good and frozen without making the Mommy of the house insane asking if they’re ready yet.

What fun summer treats do you make or love?

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Random trivia: Did you know that the word “popsicle” should be capitalized because it’s actually a brand name and registered trademark? Popsicle® is a brand name, but has become generically substituted for any kind of ice pop. Who knew?