where wildly different is perfectly normal
Homemade freezer pops
Homemade freezer pops

Homemade freezer pops

After the heavy and intense posts of the last few days, now it’s time for something completely different! Sweet. Fruity. Refreshing.

I’m really more excited about this than I should be. The boys love popsicles. They eat popsicles nearly every day in the summer, sitting outside and dripping onto anything that doesn’t move. Rosie loves them too, and sits as close as possible to catch drips or chunks that fall. I don’t so much love popsicles simply because the ingredients suck. Have you ever read the ingredient list on a package of popsicles/OtterPops? Yes, they’re convenient, but good God! I might as well water down some Karo syrup and pour it down their throats! Add in questionable colors and preservatives and flavorings and sugars and…no thanks, my kid is hyper enough thankyouverymuch. I’ve gotten around the whole popsicle thing by sucking it up and spending more for the all-fruit bars. Still, those don’t even have the greatest ingredients. I’ve tried making my own popsicles, but the molds would get so rigid in the freezer that it was a miracle if I got the popsicle out before A) it melted all over me B) it broke into a gazillion pieces causing a small child to sob that I was a popsicle murderer C) aforementioned child lost interest or D) I wondered why the hell I didn’t make margaritasicles in the first place.

Until now.

I saw something somewhere (I’m ever so helpful, eh?) about silicone popsicle sleeves and was intrigued. Off to a certain shopping website named for a river that is my go-to site for all things I want. Hey! They really do exist! Silicone popsicle sleeves! I can make my own OtterPops!

And all summer I did.

Silicone sleeve

They’re just the right size for a popsicle, and are easy as pie to make up. Choose your filling and go nuts.

I put the sleeves into a vase we got for our wedding (hey, it’s not like I get a lot of flowers!) to hold it steady while filling it.

Fill to about an inch from the top, no more. The filling will expand when it freezes, and unless you’re a fan of scrubbing an ice-cold surface, make sure they don’t spill over and freeze.

If you’re freezing something that has a little more heft to it, like yogurt, use a funnel. Trust me when I say that funnel usage greatly cuts down on slimy yogurt mess.

Pop on the lid. Again, unless you’re a fan of scrubbing the freezer, for God’s sake make sure it’s on tight. Learn from me, my children.

Freeze until frozen. In a related note, the freezer can freeze things.

I made these most of the summer. I used fruit juice, homemade triple berry yogurt, grape soda, and the ever-popular leftover apple/peach nectar that was used when canning peaches. Holy sweet! Comes with a side of insulin. It was simply apple juice in which the peaches simmered as we canned them, but damn! Suh-weet!!! My teeth hurt thinking about it. But, by far, the most popular was…drum roll…homemade chocolate pudding pops. Dude. I have to make chocolate pudding with almond milk because of A’s super-intense dairy sensitivity, so making pudding pops was simply the next logical step. And dang. Good. Love. So good that multi-syllabic words are apparently beyond me.

So how’d the boys like the summer’s homemade popsicle experiment?

They were a hit.

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I received nothing for this post. The manufacturers of the silicone popsicle sleeves do not know I exist. I post this out of the goodness of my heart. That good enough, FCC?

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