Saturday, July 23, 2011

Homemade healthy popsicles


As you know, we try to be a health conscious family. We try to buy as few packaged foods as possible and try to avoid excess sugar. This summer, Vivi discovered that popsicles are just the coolest thing around, and started asking for them a lot. She gets them at Nana's house occasionally, but she started asking for them at home too. I don't mind an occasional sugary treat, but I'd rather not keep them in the house. So, I decided to put my popsicle molds to good use. For my first recipe, I was using my only so-so Magic Bullet Blender. The following week was my birthday, and Eric surprised me with a Blendtec Blender, woo hoo! So now I can blend anything!

To make healthy popsicles, just throw whatever fruits you want in the blender, blend to your desired consistency (I do it smooth since I have little mouths still, but chunky fruit would be good too), and pour into popsicle molds. When they are frozen, I put them into labelled freezer bags so I can make more. My mold makes 8 popsicles, which fits just right in a quart sized freezer bag, and now the girls can pick their flavor!

To make sure the kids don't miss the sugar, make sure your fruit is really ripe, so that it's sweeter.

Our recipes so far:

Peach Banana
3 ripe peaches
1 ripe banana
splash of lemon juice to prevent browning

Strawberry Cantaloupe
equal parts strawberry and cantaloupe
I actually threw a raw carrot in this one too, but most blenders can't do that

Blueberry mango
1 ripe mango
2 handfuls blueberries

We also had leftover peanut butter chocolate banana milkshake one day, so I poured that into popsicle molds and made ice cream pops!






1 comment:

  1. Thanks much for the tips! Trying it tonight. I'm a sugar-a-holic so I'm adjusting my palette. (smile)

    ReplyDelete