Day 187 — Hibiscus & Honey Ice Pops

The cold that ripped through my family a few weeks ago has now, unfortunately, started working its way through the extended family with whom we’re spending the week. My poor sister in law needs to be on a plane tomorrow morning, and both she and her toddler are coughing and congested. So I made a honey-based tea ice pop tonight to help them feel better.

For the tea, I used a hibiscus/mixed berry blend made by my other sister in law. It’s reminiscent of Celstial Seasoning’s line of Zinger teas, but much smoother and sweeter (none of the tartness that the Zingers usually have). I mixed in a generous tablespoon of honey to make sure the pop would have a nice consistency.

I don’t have the photos ready to post yet, but the pops came out a beautiful rose color. I didn’t eat one, but I hear that the honey flavor was predominant. From where I was sitting, it seemed like a nice, soothing pop (but I’ll have to check with my sister in law).

(I left my camera in the same room as my sleeping baby, so no photos right now. I will have to edit later).

Day 186 — Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July, y’all! I’m celebrating with food, fun, family and of course, ice pops! I will try to post two pops tomorrow to make up for skipping today. I might even manage that second try at a patriotic pop.

Day 185 — Tricolor Ice Pops

I still have a ton of different juices in my fridge, so I decided to use some of them up tonight:

I decided to make three different versions of this pop. To remember which juice I needed to pour in which mold next, I kept them lined up behind their respective slots, rotating them as I poured each layer. The finished pops came out really great:

It surprises me how the same three juices could make such different looking pops. I like the mostly-orange one. Which one is your favorite?

Day 184 — Chocolate Angel Food Cake Ice Pops

Yesterday my sister-in-law (and secret mystery blogger) made these amazing strawberry shortcake push up pops, and in the course of making them ended up with a lot of leftover mini angel food cakes. I claimed them for my own to see how they’d work in an ice pop:

I was hoping that this cake, which was a little crusy, would maintain its own character in an ice pop, so I went with a contrasting base flavor, using my basic chocolate ice pop recipe and substituting a small splash of whipping cream for the half & half I usually use.

I tried to cram as much cake into each pop as I could, again in the hopes that it would retain its texture and flavor. Not that you can tell from looking at the finished pops:

And alas, despite my hopes to the contrary, the cake totally blended into the background on these popsicles. They weren’t bad, but the cake didn’t offer enough flavor or texture to really be worth a repeat try.

Day 183 — Patriotic Stripe Ice Pop

I’m back! Did you miss me? Probably not, thanks to my wonderful MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!, who swooped in and made a pop for me last night while I hunkered down and tried not to get sick. They did a great job, and it was nice to wake up this morning and giggle through their post instead of feeling guilty that I skipped a day.

Anyway, It’s the first of July, so I’ve decided to prepare for the upcoming holiday by making red, white and blue ice pops. First up, a healthy, juice based version:

Berry blend smoothie for the red layer, lemonade for the white layer, and a blueberry smoothie for the blue layer.

I used two ounces of each juice for the three pops, but didn’t measure otherwise. They came out pretty even, in spite of that:

Honestly, these came out looking more like neopolitan ice pops than patriotic ice pops.  The blueberry layer, in particular, was more brown than blue.  But they still looked nice and the kids who ate them assured me they tasted good anyway.

Day 182 – MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!!

The popmistress had a rough day, houseguests, three sick kids (two of hers, one houseguest) and an encroaching cold of her own. As a result, she went to bed early, and we decided to appoint ourselves the “MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!!”

After much hemming and hawing, several really bad ideas (and probably some good ones), the MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!! finally arrived at an ingredients list. The among the many discarded ingredients: peanut butter, vinegar, pickle juice, and pinto beans.

Here were the winners… (picture an Iron Chef style reveal)

Watermelon, Basil, Cucumber, Strawberry!

The MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!! didn’t want to risk waking any of the many sleeping children (or the popmistress herself), so it was decided no power implements could be used (i.e. a blender). Instead, improvisation ruled the day and a manual crushing system was derived.

You really have to get your hand inside the crusher cup to make it work…

Finally we fish out the cucumbers, really their essence is all we were looking for (plus they didn’t crush well).  The popmistress always adds a little sugar (for freezability?), so we did too.  About a teaspoon.

Then we took out the Zoku and the fun began!!! The mixture poured ok, though it was a little gloppy.

Now to wait.  Not really sure how long, in the meantime a couple kids woke up, a temperature or two was taken, medicine was delivered as appropriate, etc…

After what seemed like must certainly be enough time, the pops were pulled!

Overall, the pops were pretty darn tasty, fresh, clean, fruity.  The spiciness of the basil makes it more interesting than a simple fruit pop, and the combination of fresh, spicy and fruity flavors “makes you think of a garden scene while eating it.” (And who doesn’t need to to think of a garden scene with so many sick kids in the house?).  And oh yes, the cucumber actually comes through.

One pop for tasting, one pop so the popmistress can taste the inspired creation of tonight’s MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!!!

Until next time.

Sincerely yours,

THE MYSTERY GUEST BLOGGERS!!!

Day 181 — Grape Lemonade Ice Pops

Those of you in the US are probably painfully aware that there’s a heatwave going on here. Pretty much the entire country is roasting, with temperatures climbing over 100 degrees where I am. So of course the AC chooses today to give up. It’s currently 83 degrees in my house and climbing, and it’s supposed to be even hotter out tomorrow.

If ever a situation called for ice pops, this is it.

I had originally planned to make a chocolate pop today, but in light of the thermostat, I wanted something cold and icy and in no way rich. Grape juice and lemonade seemed to fit the bill:

I decided to try a slanty pop again, since it had been a while. I didn’t measure (as you can tell), just kept switching the orientation of the Zoku as I poured my layers freehand. Still, they turned out nice enough:

You can see how hot it is in here — mere seconds out of the Zoku and already melting.

And they were cold. Blissfully cold. Today, that’s all I really wanted.

Day 180 — Tulsi Ginger Ice Pops

Sorry I skipped yesterday’s pop. We have family in town, and I ended up too tired from hanging out with everyone to make an ice pop. But I’m back today.

Even better, my sister-in-law came bearing ice pop fodder gifts, in the form of really interesting tea from India:

What is tulsi, you ask?  Good question.  I didn’t know either.  Luckily, the package had some information:

In case you can’t read this, Tulsi is a kind of basil, known in India for its healing properties.

 

I brewed up a cup of tea and squeezed in a good tablespoon of honey, let it cool and poured my pops.  They turned out a very nice honey color (go figure).

These were by far my favorite of the tea-based ice pops I’ve made.  They were a little on the sweet side, but the honey gave them a nice consistency.  And the tea itself had just enough of the spice of ginger to make them interesting.  I didn’t really taste any flavor that I could identify as the tulsi, but still it was a really nice ice pop.  A second round of these might be just the thing we need when the temperature hits 104 degrees tomorrow.

Day 178 — Dark Chocolate Ice Pops

Since I’ve made ice pops out of two of those Philly chocolate cream cheese flavors, I figured I might as well finish off the trio:

I’ll be honest, I tried the dark chocolate flavor with some Nilla Wafers, and I really didn’t like it. It was too aggressively bitter tasting. But I figured diluted with some milk, it stood a chance at being good.

I mixed about a tablespoon of the cream cheese with about 5 ounces of milk, which made enough for three ice pops.

In ice pop form, this stuff is indeed delicious. Rich without being too much and flavorful without being bitter, they were fun to eat. I’ll be they’d be fantastic with some of those Nilla Wafers crushed up into them. (Yay! New pop idea!)

Day 177 — White Chocolate Ice Pop

Today I finally decided to try the other flavors of that Philly cream cheese dessert spread.  I have made several pops out of the milk chocolate flavor, and have really liked them (and the spread in general).  So I was curious to see how the other kinds tasted:

I blended equal parts of the cream cheese and milk, then poured my pop.  To be honest, my expectations were low.  This stuff tastes ok, but isn’t nearly as delicious as the milk chocolate version.  But the ice pop mixture smelled exactly like a Chick-fil-a vanilla milkshake, so I knew it would be at least decent tasting.

The finished pop exceeded my expectations.  It had no cream cheese flavor at all, but the flavor of white chocolate really did come through, even more than in the spread alone.  Still not as good as the milk chocolate flavor, but not bad, either.