Mango Lime Ginger Tarragon Popsicles

Yeah we're a little consumed with popsicles. It's the heat. It's the fact that there's so much great fresh food at the market. It makes throwing a few ingredients into a blender and freezing for about an hour and half the easiest and best summer treat. So here we go!



INGREDIENTS:

2 large ripe mangoes peeled (approximately 3 - 4 cups)
2 tbsp Turbinado sugar (can use other sweeteners - what ever you have/like - would probably avoid something like mollasses though)
1/4 - 1/2 tsp lime zest
juice of one medium lime (approximately 2 tbsp of juice)
1 tbsp fresh ginger chopped
1 tsp fresh tarragon chopped
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

- Peel, chop, zest, juice everything into one bowl or put it directly into a blender or food processor.
- Add sugar, salt and cayenne.
- Blend everything until incorporated. On this step you can experiment a bit. If you don't want everything super smooth, but maybe some bits of mango and ginger you can blend in short bursts. Also all ingreditents can be adjusted to taste so feel free to experiment with that too.
- Fill molds and place sticks in.
- Put in freezer for minimum 1.5 hours

makes 6 pops

We haven't posted our experiment with the sweet plums we bought at the farmers' market, but that pop also came out good! We did a mostly sweet plum and lime pop with a cumumber and lime "rind". We pitted about a quarts worth of plums (with the skins on) threw them in a blender with the same amount of sugar and lime zest and juice as above. We let that freeze for about 45 minutes (just so that it was frozen through enough so that when we poured the cucumber mix they would stay distinct and not so frozen that the stick wouldn't go in). The cucumber mix is the same one we used for the watermelon prosecco pops here.

Food Science Geekery Alert! Every wonder why store bought pops and homemade pops don't taste as much alike as you'd expect? And we're not just talking about flavors etc. It has to do with the quickness of commercial freezing process. Home freezers don't work as quickly as commercial freezers and therefore there is time for the liquid and the sugar to separate a bit. We think this might not be as much of an issue with fruits like mango and bananna that have a lower water to fruit ratio. You can read more about this here.

the first of the frosty army!