Tea-riffic Pops!

Sorry, again. I've been neglectful. I promise, I still love you. And making pops to share with you. But I have a REALLY good excuse. I was in Cape Cod for the week and our beautifully outfitted kitchen had two fancy freezer drawers. Unfortunately, neither of them was functional. Sadly, no pops. Dr. Cornelius and I were quite disappointed. But anyways, I am back and I have a few pops to catch y'all up on, enjoy!

Every summer Miss McNitt (and formerly Skipper Wurzburg) and I make vodka tea. I'm convinced Absolut's Wild Tea Vodka was ripped off our brilliant and delicious concoction. We take a pitcher of vodka and steep sixish fruit flavored tea bags in the sun for 48 hours. It is delicious. So delicious in fact, Miss McNitt often forgets its straight booze and consumes it by the glassful. I don't recommend it.

This March, my mother and I spent a delightfully relaxing week at  Mii Amo spa in Sedona, Arizona. There I enjoyed several daily glasses of Sedona Sun Iced Tea. It's a delicious herbal rooibos made with elderberries and black currants. I brought home a small sample and decided to *pop* some into some pops. I combined:

1 cup of tea (steeped overnight)
1/2 cup frozen raspberries

That's it! Very simple and very flavorful! Try it with YOUR favorite tea.

Pops around the World

I love Vietnamese food. Goi cuon, pho, all of it. I love the herbs and flavors: spearmint, garlic, lime, cilantro, shallot, coconut and most of all, lemongrass. I began thinking of ways to incorporate lemongrass into a pop. I toyed with ideas involving vanilla, orange and mango and finally settled on pineapple. I wanted it to be tangy but also creamy and rich. I combined:

1 cup frozen pineapple
3 ounces greek yogurt
1 tablespoon lemongrass paste
1 teaspoon ginger paste
2 tablespoons lime juice

I didn't want another boring yellow pop so I admit, I added some yellow food coloring to half of the mixture to make stripes. I love these pops. Miss Silbert has deemed them her new favorite. They're the perfect amount of creaminess and manage to be both savory and sweet. This recipe will definitely be repeated. Send me YOUR favorite kind of food and I'll design a pop for YOU!

I'm in love.

Yes, I'm in love. With Siggi's Icelandic style yogurt. But we'll get back to that. I wanted to make creamsicles. But not your traditional creamsicle... I always found those a bit heavy on the cream, light on the sicle. I picked out some orange/mango juice and was pondering what to use as filling. I finally decided on greek yogurt. But alas, there was no vanilla greek yogurt (of the fat free persuasion) at Whole Foods! Blast! I instead grabbed some vanilla Siggi's. Impressed with the ingredient list (all natural), I picked up some strawberry as well.

This yogurt is awesome. I don't know how else to describe it. Go out and buy some. NOW. But don't buy all the strawberry, I need more. Ok, back to the pops...

I filled the ZOKU with the orange/mango juice and let freeze for about 3 minutes. I then removed the center of the pop (with the fancy ZOKU baster-looking-tool) and filled it with vanilla yogurt blended with a little water and agave syrup.

They turned out quite well. Miss McNitt deemed them her new favorite. And I'm anxious to make more pops with fun fillings. Suggestions? Leave a comment!

Herb-berry

Why am I so delicious to mosquitoes? They absolutely adore me. And lately, they're everywhere. Luckily, the chivalrous Dr. Cornelius ventured out into my parents' mosquito infested garden and clipped a beautiful selection of herbs for me. So brave. And my very generous parents (once again) bought an insane amount of blueberries at the farmer's market and donated some to their grateful daughter.

What to do with all of this generosity? I decided to make BERRY ROSEMARY pops. I blended:

- 1 cup blueberries
- 1/2 cup silken tofu
- 1 tbsp agave syrup
- 2 tbsp minced fresh rosemary

set half of mixture aside and add:

- 1 cup frozen raspberries

Alternate stripes of the two mixtures. Yields 6 Zoku pops. I ended up with some extra mixture and added: 

- 1 cup frozen strawberries
- 2 shots Absolut Vodka

Pour into ice pop mold. Yields 5 pops.

I think they turned out beautifully! I've realized that heavy mixtures containing blended fruit (as opposed to juice or other liquid) yield strange, uneven stripes. The mixture doesn't spread fast enough across the mold to create straight stripes. Not ideal, but cute and homemade looking. Any other herby pop ideas? Leave your ideas in the comments section, or post on the mmmPOP! Facebook Page.

Purely Pineapple

I'm sorry I've been so distant. I really am. It's been a busy few weeks. But now the weekend is over, many many pops were consumed and many many sticks are now available for use. I PROMISE posting will resume as normal this week.

Last week, feeling beaten down by my day with the little ones, I came home in need of refreshment. That refreshment often comes in the form of red wine but I'm trying to cut back on week days. Trying. Remembering the Whole Foods 365 Pineapple Pops of blessed memory, I decided to resurrect them. Easy enough. I blended pineapple and.....pineapple.

They're pretty awesome. In retrospect, I should've left some pineapple chunks in to add a little complexity to the texture. Next time.