It’s been a really, really hot summer here in Maine. I’ll be honest with you, I hate heat, which is why I live in Maine. 75F is about my maximum level of heat tolerance. In my ideal world I’d live somewhere with an average temperature of 65 year round with about 7 days of snow so that I could go XC skiing. I digress. Here’s the thing, when it’s in the 90s with crazy humidity every day, I do not want to cook, and my kid usually does not want to eat. Correction, my kid doesn’t want to eat anything good for her. What she wants to eat is ice cream, and frankly I don’t blame her. She also loves popsicles, so I devised a scheme in which she thinks she is eating treats for breakfast, but is actually eating an extremely healthy meal. What I do is make a batch of smoothies and then freeze them in popsicle molds. Maggie also really likes helping me cook, so it keeps her entertained for awhile too.
Before I get started showing you what went into it, 2 things – I’m using a Cuisinart because that’s what I have. It’s an enormous pain in the ass, if you have a blender use it. 2. This recipe is never the same, I usually just throw what I have on hand in there. That said, I tried to sneak some silken tofu into a batch the other day and it was an epic fail. Maggie hated them.
OK, Here we go:
First up, peel and slice a frozen banana. I have a million frozen bananas in my fridge, we never eat them fast enough, so I chuck them in the freezer so they don’t rot. Plus, frozen bananas are awesome in smoothies.Be really, really careful peeling frozen bananas. They are slippery little bastards.
Chuck the banana in the Cuisinart or whatever you using (blender jealousy). Next add a cup of whatever fresh or frozen fruit you have on hand. We used:
A cup of Blackberries
A cup of Blueberries
A cup of Mangoes
A cup of Peaches
Blend the fruit until there are no chunks. I have recently seen popsicle recipes in food magazines where they mush everything through a sieve to get the seeds out, but I’m not that kind of girl. Next, add a cup of yogurt.
And 2 Tbsp of Maple Syrup.
Blend everything up until it’s smooth and looks like this:
Get your lovely assistant to help you fill the popsicle molds and put them in the freezer:
See my fancy new popsicle molds from Target? I lurve them.
This recipe yields 8 popsicles like the ones in the above picture and 2 popsicles of the rocket pop variety:
I hate these kind of popsicle molds. They aren’t “real” popsicles.
Let them freeze up and then eat them. Duh. Your kids will love them, and think they are getting away with something by eating pops for breakfast. I even played it up:
Maggie:Hey Mom, can I have popsicles for breakfast?
Me: Oh I don’t know, that’s pretty wild.
Maggie: PLEEAAASSEEEEE
Me: OK, I guess, because your such a good girl!
You can peel frozen bananas? You are my hero. I freeze them peeled.
ME WANNA POPSICLE! NOW!
I wonder if C would like those. Is there ever an age when you're too young for ice cream? Oh, but I'm a bad mom.
And I'm making those TOMORROW.
Oh YUUUM! I have some frozen fruit in the freezer…but I usually make it into adult drinks 🙂 I guess we could have popsicles for breakfast instead!!
Stopping by from SITS #31DBBB.
You're a genius. Seriously.
What a great idea! So healthy, too!
-Jessica
http://mommyhoodnextright.blogspot.com