Pinterest Thursday-Popsicles!

It’s officially summer, and I have been experimenting with something I have wanted to try for a long time but have never gotten around to-popsicles!

I purchased these molds:

So far, I have to say the rectangular ones have lids that don’t fit very well, but they still work OK. The star ones are great (although I would reserve them for less chunky options as they are a bit harder to clean), and I really like that there is a handy funnel and bases for the molds. They were pretty cheap, so I think they were worth it.

I also already had one set of molds I got a long time ago from Wal-Mart.

My goal for the summer was to keep it pretty simple, while still experimenting with some new recipes.

I decided to keep one mold filled with water. My kids love water popsicles, and it doesn’t get any easier than that!

The second mold was for something easy, pre-made, and somewhat healthy. I didn’t want anything with lots of chemicals or additives, and they needed to be gluten-free/dairy-free too.

So, after a bunch of research, I decided to buy from the Simply Lemonade line. The ingredients? Fruit. Perfect.

We have tried:

The strawberry was good, the raspberry was excellent, and I wouldn’t buy the smoothie one again. It was just OK, and I have made better myself.

Regardless, one bottle of juice makes several rounds of popsicles, so it a perfect treat I can make quickly without much effort but is still pretty healthy. And, because the bottles make so many, it isn’t any more expensive than buying the pre-made popsicles that have all the junk in them.

With my final set of molds however, well, this is where I wanted to try making some recipes!

I make the kinds above all the time so there are always popsicles, but I have made a few recipes now as well.

First up, I have had on my list to make GF/DF fudgesicles for quite some time.

I found this recipe from Silk:

pin and picture found here

These were not at all difficult to make, are tasty, and made The Boy VERY happy! I have made them a few times now, and will continue to keep them in the rotation.

The next I made were these:

pin and picture found here

These were pretty good. Again, very easy, and I liked them better than the Simply Smoothie ones.

The fudgesicle ones are made on the stove, and I made the strawberry banana ones in my food processor, but there were several recipes I wanted to try that I could really have used a blender for (which I didn’t have.)

So, I decided to invest in a blender. I picked one out, and just a few days later, one came up damaged-packaging on Amazon. If you aren’t looking for damaged-packaging items on Amazon (where it says “New and Used” under the item’s description), you are missing out. I get the BEST deals this way, and they have a great return policy, so you aren’t out anything to give it a try.

I got this one:

It is normally $99.99, but I got it for $55.19 because of this:

Yep. That’s it. And, it was so heavily packaged on the inside, that it didn’t even make a dent into the packaging. THAT’S a good deal!

Anyway, I haven’t made popsicles in it yet, but I HAVE made ice cream and snow cones, which I will share more about in another post.

That’s it for today!

Hope you are having a great summer so far!