Popsicles

[blue_dolphin]

Small batches of blackberries & lemon verbena, on the left, and blueberries & cream on the right.  

I wanted to try the blueberry & buttermilk combination but that will have to wait as the sweet cream was at the ready and that sounded pretty good too.

[Anna N]

The peaches I brought home from the grocery store were nectarines. 

[curls]

On August 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Anna N said:

@Smithy

 

I tried that tactic,  I really did.   But to no avail. The book jumped into my Kindle app and the popsicle moulds should jump into my mailbox tomorrow.  Resistance is futile. 

Resistance is definitely futile. Went shopping at Wegmans tonight and they had these space popsicle molds (http://www.zokuhome.com/products/space-pop) on clearance had to take a box home because of all the beautiful popsicles that @blue_dolphin has made! Almost came home with a set of their character popsicle molds (http://www.zokuhome.com/collections/pops-ice-molds/products/character-pops) too -- also on clearance at Wegmans. Now to make room in the freezer. 

 

Edited August 27, 2016 by curls
hoping to make more sense (log)

[Smithy]

11 hours ago, Anna N said:

The peaches I brought home from the grocery store were nectarines. 

 

Less peeling required!

[Anna N]

8 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

Less peeling required!

I was so stunned that I could make such a mistake and so disappointed that peach-bourbon popsicles were still in my future that I just grabbed one and ate it. It was soooooo good that I leaned over the sink and ate 3 more!  They are gone. No nectarine popsicles. 

[blue_dolphin]

Strawberries & cream:

All of the _________& cream popsicles I've made from the people's pops book have been delightful and these were no exception. 

[blue_dolphin]

The rest of the farmers market strawberries went into these strawberries & balsamic vinegar pops:

Edited August 28, 2016 by blue_dolphin (log)

[blue_dolphin]

Chocolate-dipped peanut butter & banana pops:

I got the recipe for these over on The Kitchn.  It's basically that one-ingredient frozen banana ice cream that was all over the place a few years ago with the addition of some peanut butter and frozen into popsicle molds. 

[Anna N]

 

@blue_dolphin

 

 What a coincidence. Just before I fell asleep last night I was thinking that banana ice cream would make a fine popsicle! Don't have any bananas of course!  Did make some mango/yogourt popsicles  but found them quite disappointing. Not enough mango flavour. Perhaps muted by the yogourt. 

 

Edited to add photo. 

Edited August 28, 2016 by Anna N (log)

[blue_dolphin]

2 minutes ago, Anna N said:

@blue_dolphin

 

 What a coincidence. Just before I fell asleep last night I was thinking that banana ice cream would make a fine popsicle! Don't have any bananas of course!  Did make some mango/yogourt popsicles  but found them quite disappointing. Not enough mango flavour. Perhaps muted by the yogourt. 

Banana popsicles would be fun to play with.  I was thinking mango and coconut would be a good addition instead of the peanut butter.  Or strawberries....or Nutella....

[Tri2Cook]

I've been following this thread with interest. Everything looks tasty but I don't eat a lot of popsicles so I haven't been overly tempted. Until banana peanut butter popsicles happened... now I feel like my outside observer position is weakening.

[Anna N]

5 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

I've been following this thread with interest. Everything looks tasty but I don't eat a lot of popsicles so I haven't been overly tempted. Until banana peanut butter popsicles happened... now I feel like my outside observer position is weakening.

You'll fall sooner or later.

[Shelby]

Yeah I have a whole bag of bananas that my husband snagged on sale.  Might have to attempt this afternoon.

[blue_dolphin]

26 minutes ago, Shelby said:

Yeah I have a whole bag of bananas that my husband snagged on sale.  Might have to attempt this afternoon.

 The recipe I linked to calls for 7 bananas to make 10 pops.  I used 4 bananas and got 7 pops.  You could easily start with 2 bananas and make a few pops to play with the recipe.  

[MelissaH]

Something that I didn't see much discussion about: filling and then unmolding. How do you all do it? I have the Norpro mold: makes 10, metal frame with plastic depressions, plastic lid with stick slots. I've used it for two batches of popsicles: the first from tapioca pudding and the second based on a blender pineapple daiquiri recipe.

 

Before I made the pudding, I stuck my wooden sticks in a shooter glass and added water to pre-soak them. (I don't remember where I read about this, but somewhere said to soak your sticks in water for an hour before using them, so I tried it.) The pudding was pretty viscous and dripped when I poured it from a spouted measuring cup into the mold. Once I got it loaded, I gave the top a swipe with a dampened paper towel before I put the lid on, to try and keep the lid from sticking in place. After about half an hour in the freezer, I stuck the sticks in and let it finish freezing. When I was ready to unmold, I pried the top off, dipped the whole thing into a bowl of hot tap water for a five-count, and wiggled the pops out one by one. This worked, but many of the pops had melted significantly by the time I released them. I laid each one on a piece of plastic wrap, folded the wrap over and around, and then stuck the whole lot in another plastic bag to keep them collected.

 

For the pineapple daiquiri pops, I didn't soak the sticks. I again put the mixture in a spouted measuring cup and poured it in. This mixture wasn't as viscous as the pudding but it was still a little on the thick side, and I still got a few drips to wipe off. When I was ready to unmold these, this time I tried dipping one enclosure at a time in a glass of hot water. The first two, on the edge, worked beautifully. But when I got into the middle, I couldn't find a vessel of a size that would admit one or two of the interior enclosures. Instead, I wound up pouring a bit of water from the cup over the enclosure I was trying to free. This worked well enough on 5 of the 6 interior popsicles. By the time I made this batch, I had been to the dollar store and purchased a box of cheapo non-ziplock sandwich bags to hold the individual unmolded popsicles, which I again bagged to contain the lot. I still experienced some melting while the bagged pops waited to be collected, but some of that could have been because this particular mix was such that it didn't freeze particularly hard. The sixth one had the stick pull out, and I scraped out what I could with a spoon and ate it as a slushie.

 

As far as the soaked vs unsoaked sticks: the pudding was easy to eat off the stick. The daiquiri seemed to have frozen right into the stick. More experimentation may be called for.

 

That said: what do you use to fill the mold cavities evenly? And do you have any tricks to make unmolding easy?

[Tri2Cook]

"That said: what do you use to fill the mold cavities evenly?"

I don't have actual popsicle molds but when I fill other types of molds with things that are to be frozen, I use a piping bag.

*Still completely unable to quote posts via the quote button. The " button in the tool bar that is supposed to give you a quote box you can enter text in yourself doesn't work either. I can't do any form of quoting other than as I did it in this post.

[blue_dolphin]

I usually use a spouted measuring cup or the blender jar (the Blendtec small Twister jar is perfect as it has an elongated spout that almost perfectly matches the width of the molds) unless the mixture is quite viscous, in which case I scoop it into a zip-top freezer bag and cut off a corner to use it like a piping bag, as @Tri2Cook suggested.  

I have the same 10-pop mold that you do, @MelissaH.  I found it sometimes difficult to remove the lid, especially if I accidentally nudged the sticks in a way that they were no longer parallel and frozen in slightly different directions. So I skip the lid and freeze until the mixture is slushy enough to support the sticks (usually 30 - 45 min or so) before sticking them in.  This method does run the risk of having the mixture frozen solid with no sticks if you forget.  So far, that hasn't happened to me, although there was a very close call with last night's peanut butter and banana pops  - timers are good!

I keep a small cookie sheet in the freezer because it helps keep the mold level on the wire shelf and then it's pre-chilled and ready to place the unmolded pops on.  When I remove the mold from the freezer, the cookie sheet comes along and gets a fresh sheet of waxed paper on top.

I have a rectangular plastic container about the size of the mold that I fill with tepid tap water so that the filled mold parts can be immersed until I can pull a pop out.  Usually 10-20 sec, though it varies a lot.  Boozy pops thaw quick. I used to run hot water over the molds but I was afraid I was using too much water so I switched to this method, then I can take the water outside and water plants.

As soon as I can get a pop to move, I put the mold on the counter next to the chilled, waxed paper topped cookie sheet, quickly remove all the pops and put them on the waxed paper and put them back into the freezer.

After they've firmed back up, I transfer the individual pops to snack-sized zip-top bags and toss them into a bigger freezer bag.  

I used to do sort of the same thing you did, folding the waxed paper over the pops and then folding the pops up accordion-style and placing the package in a larger bag.  I hate the waste of the individual bags but it's easier for giving them away or serving to a group and results in less freezer-burn.  When I eat one at home, I rinse out the bags, dry and reuse them.

 

I usually give the sticks a quick rinse before I use them and check for loose splinters but I haven't done any soaking comparisons.

Edited December 13, 2017 by blue_dolphin
Recommending tepid, rather than hot water for unmolding as I find it works better. (log)

[Anna N]

 

Roasted strawberry and coconut milk. 

[MelissaH]

Yeah, I've had lid issues both times I've used the mold. I'm new enough to this that I don't know whether it's something I'm doing (or not doing) or if it's just a "feature" of this particular lid/mold combo.

 

And yes, the boozy pops definitely melted much faster. I think I'm going to steal that cookie sheet trick, to see if that works for me. And I'm going to start hunting for a small rectangular container that's *just* the right size.

[blue_dolphin]

These are Pear Dark & Stormy pops - I made Dark & Stormy pops last year and thought they would be nice with the fruit base.

I cooked and puréed the pear and added Goslings Black Seal rum (bought the 151 proof by mistake - yikes!), ginger beer, lime juice and some ginger-infused simple syrup.  

Made myself a Dark & Stormy cocktail to sip while I tasted the mixture to adjust the flavors . 

I had some thin strips of candied lime peel at the ready to represent the lime garnish but I forgot to add them as I was keen to finish my cocktail.  A lesson there, I think.  

 

[blue_dolphin]

A variation on the roasted plum pops from the people's pops cookbook.  I previously made a batch with just Dapple Dandy pluots.  This time, I roasted three varieties of plum/plumcot/pluot and layered them in the molds.

The dark pink is the Dapple Dandy, widely marketed as "Dinosaur Egg."  In the middle, we have Summer Punch, which has crimson skin with light orange flesh and the bright gold color is from the green-skinned Emerald Beaut that has super sweet golden flesh. In all cases, I puréed the roasted fruit with the skins and stopped before it was completely smooth for a bit of texture.

[Shelby]

Oooooooh pretttttty!

[blue_dolphin]

These are the plum, yogurt and tarragon pops from the people's pops cookbook made with Dapple Dandy pluots from the farmers market.  

After unmolding, I dipped some tarragon leaves into the tarragon-infused simple syrup used in the pops and stuck them on.  If they turn black and look ugly, I'll have to peel them off.  

[Shelby]

You are a popsicle chef, BD.

[Shel_B]

Found this recipe and details for fudge pops at Serious eats.  I love fudgesicles, and these promise to have a deeper chocolate flavor than the store-bought ones in the yellow box. Definitely something I am going to try. 

 

Click Here for Recipe and Technique