How to make striped popsicles (and fruit popsicles)

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Last week, as part of the Beat the summer heat series, I started talking about one of our favorite – and most delicious – ways to cool off during the summer: making homemade popsicles! The wonderful thing is that you can make them just as healthy as you want, so when your kids ask to eat a popsicle for breakfast, hey… why not?! I usually use organic ingredients and I even recently purchased some non-plastic popsicle molds* so that I don’t even have to think about chemicals leaching out from the plastic.

So far I’ve only talked about different types of popsicle molds and a few simple ingredients to try for popsicles. But today we’re going to get all fancy, because I’m going to show you how to make two types of striped popsicles, as well as natural fruit popsicles! Let’s get started!

STRIPED YOGURT POPSICLES

Oh yes! Yogurt popsicles are really, really good! And, because they’re just yogurt that has been frozen, they’re creamy and healthy, too. (Well, I’m no nutritionist, and perhaps freezing yogurt destroys the good stuff in it, but it’s definitely not UNhealthy.) You can make simple yogurt popsicles, or you can mix up colors and flavors in these striped yogurt popsicles! These are my kids’ absolute favorite popsicles, and could very well become your kids’ favorites, too!

You’ll need a set of popsicle molds and three flavors of yogurt. (Two works, too, obviously, but three’s cooler!) Try to get very different flavors. I generally use banana, strawberry or peach, and blueberry or cherry.

Then just layer them inside the popsicle molds! Start off with the least strong flavor (in my case, banana), then the mid-strength flavor (strawberry), and finally the strongest flavor (blueberry). This is to ensure that the flavors of yogurt get eaten in order of growing strength. If you were to eat blueberry first, the banana wouldn’t taste like much afterwards.

I usually find that one regular-sized cup of three flavors is enough for six molds.

When you’re done, put on the caps and freeze as usual.

Then enjoy a yummier-than-usual cold treat later on in the day!

The pictures in this post are from two and three summers ago. Here you can see my 1-year-old Nicky enjoying his yogurt popsicle. So you can see that they’re perfect even for very young children!

STRIPED JUICE POPSICLES

Juice is probably the most often used ingredient for homemade popsicles. You can mix different flavors together (or mix them with milk, as I mentioned in the last post) for a whole new flavor. So then why not mix different flavors together for two separate flavors in the same popsicle?

It’s easy to layer thick yogurt, but you obviously can’t layer liquids that way. So to create separate juice layers, you need to freeze them one at a time. How many layers you can make depends on how far the popsicle stick goes down inside the mold because, once the juice gets frozen around the stick, you can no longer remove it to add another flavor. For this reason, I can only get in two layers. You also need clear popsicle molds for this method.

First, hold the popsicle mold up with the stick and cap in place. Mark where the stick ends with some masking tape. Fill the mold with juice up to the tape, put the cap back on, and freeze it.

Once it’s frozen, open the mold back up, fill it the rest of the way with the second flavor of juice, put the cap back on and freeze it. Like with the striped yogurt popsicles, it’s best to put the least strong flavor of juice in first.

It’s not quite as cool as the striped yogurt popsicles, but it’s still pretty special! My Sofia definitely enjoys this type of popsicle, as you can see.

But what about the popsicle that I’m eating in this picture? It’s a pretty simple, yet satisfying version…

FRUIT AND JUICE POPSICLES

In this version, we mix fresh fruit with juice. In this case, I mixed fresh peaches with organic peach nectar.

First, cut up the fruit into small pieces.

Put the pieces in the popsicle molds, almost to the top.

If you have any extra fruit, feed it to your little helper.

Pour juice over the fruit.

Cap and freeze as usual…

…and enjoy a special healthy textured popsicle!

Once you get started, there’s no stopping. You just keep thinking of more and more popsicle variations! Which of these three variations, or which others, would you like to try? I’d love to hear your ideas, too!

This post on how to make striped popsicles is part of the Beating the Summer Heat series! Stay tuned for more ideas on how to stay cool at home on hot summer days!