Cool Off With These Sweet Treats

Raise your hand if you made your own popsicles as a kid. I sure did. If it was liquid, it went into a paper Dixie® cup and was stuck in the freezer – fruit juice from concentrate, root beer, Kool-Aid®. You get the idea...frozen sugar.

Older, perhaps wiser, and definitely more health conscious, I decided to revisit a favorite summertime treat and make my own ice pops from fresh fruit.

Watermelon-Lime Pops

The key here is using very ripe fruit, although Im sure frozen fruit would work equally as well. What I discovered though, is that fruit loses some of its sweetness after freezing, so if you still have the sweet tooth you did as a child, you might want to throw in a sweetener like agave nectar or raw honey.

Blueberry-Blackberry Ice Pop

All you do is puree your fruit in the blender or food processor – try melons, berries, mangos, grapes, anything! Remember to first remove any pits and seeds. Add some coarsely chopped fruit to the puree if you like, pour into popsicle molds, and freeze them.

If you dont have popsicle molds, pour into 3-ounce Dixie® cups, cover the cups with plastic wrap (holds the stick in place), poke a wooden popsicle stick through, and freeze.

Peach-Honey Popsicle

Voilà! Frozen treats in about four hours.

Go on, give it a try. Youre never too old to have a happy (healthy) childhood!