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!

It's a party over here!

As a new blog, we are especially thrilled and honored to have our Basil, Coconut, and Lime Pop recipe as a finalist in the YumUniverse party-theme recipe contest! If you haven't checked out the YumUniverse website yet, you must! It's one of the most informative and tasty-recipe-laden whole foods blogs out there. And as an aside, if you're thinking of trying out a healthier plant-based diet, we can't recommend Heather's YU Test Drive Guide enough.

We can't wait to try out the other recipes. Everything looks so amazing! Can you believe that Heather and her friends spent a weekend testing out ALL the contest entries? That's a lot of cooking!! You can check out the behind the scenes here. Looks like a lot of fun! We can't wait to have another test kitchen weekend ourselves, try some of these recipes out, and come up with more tasty recipes of our own.

In the meantime, if you want to vote, all you have to do is "like" your favorite recipe (such as, say, some delightful basil/coconut/lime pops? ;) ) on the YU Facebook page. Easy peasy. Voting closes in one week so you have plenty of time to try these all out.

Here are links to the finalists' recipes:

Our coconut/basil/lime pops (yaaaaaay!!)

Lisa Pitman’s Party Perfect Petit Fours

Rawxy’s YUM Cake

Sweet Potato Soul’s Pineapple Almond Balls

Making Love In The Kitchen with Meghan’s Spicy Sweet Potato & Refried Bean Burrito

We are going to try them all! How about you?

Heatwave, you say? Popsicles, we say!

It's been hot in NYC. I mean really hot. OK, maybe not Texas hot and I'm sure it was hotter in Arizona last week, but, and say this in your best inner Fran Drescher voice, "that's a dry heat!" So you're having guests over, your A/C goes kaput, the beach is just too crowded, and hauling a kiddie pool and 100 gallons of water up to the roof of your buddy's 6-floor walk-up isn't an option, what do you do to cool off? Make popsicles, of course! And we're not talking colored tubes of sugar-water here, though those bring back a lot of fond memories of Summers of Yore. We're talking real, satisfying, flavorful, healthful (gasp!) grown-up pops. We got together last weekend and had a pop making party, complete with very willing taste-testers. We're sharing our three favorites below: Coconut, Basil & Lime, Watermelon Prosecco With a Cucumber & Lime Rind, and Samoa. That's right, Samoa. On a stick. It's like dunking the frozen cookie in a glass of milk without having to wait for Girl Scout cookie season. Oh yeah. But I digress. Let's check out some recipes:

COCONUT BASIL LIME POPS
[makes 8]



INGREDIENTS:
- 1 can (13.5 oz) coconut milk (you can use tetra pack style coconut milks like Silk brand but it's thinner in texture & usually has added sugar)
- 1/4 cup [4 tbsp] sugar or sweetener of choice such as agave or brown rice syrup
- 5 biggish leaves of fresh backyard basil
- juice of 1 lime including pulp (you can add the zest, too, if you want the lime to come to the forefront of the pop more)
- 1/2 cup of coconut water or pure filtered water





DIRECTIONS:
First we warmed the coconut milk, sugar, and basil in a cute little pot to infuse the milk with the herb's flavor and integrate the sugar. If you don't want to turn the stove on and wash an extra pot, you could probably get away with skipping straight to the next step: Blend your coconut milk, sugar, and basil in a blender until basil is shredded and sugar is incorporated.

Add your lime juice, pulp, and zest (if using) and give it a whir again. Then add the coconut water or water before giving it a final mix.

Pour into molds & freeze. We found that using a spouted Pyrex measuring cup or a funnel helps getting all these pops into their molds neatly.

WATERMELON / PROSECCO POPS WITH CUCUMBER / LIME "RIND"
[makes 8]



WATERMELON / PROSECCO POPS

INGREDIENTS:
- 2 cups 1" cubed watermelon (make sure there are no black seeds)
- 1 tbsp sugar / agave / brown rice syrup / honey / sweetener of choice (maple syrup is not recommended here)
- 1 tbsp fresh lime juice (about half a lime, juiced)
- 1/2 tsp lime zest (a little more than half a lime, zested)
- 1/2 cup prosecco (we used Palmer sparkling white. It's local from the North Fork vineyards and delightful!)





DIRECTIONS:
Blend all ingredients in a blender. Fill popsicle molds 3/4 of the way and freeze for at least an hour. You want this just frozen enough to hold another layer on top of it, but not so frozen, you can't get a stick through it.

CUCUMBER / LIME "RIND" (makes a great pop on its own, too! Double the recipe for that.)

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cucumber peeled & seeded
- 1 tbsp sugar / agave / brown rice syrup / honey / sweetener of choice (maple syrup is not recommended here)
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tsp fresh lime juice

DIRECTIONS:
Blend all ingredients in a blender until all the cucumber is pureed. Fill the remaining 1/4 of pop mold over the frozen watermelon portion, stick the pop sticks in, and freeze for a couple more hours until solid.

We found that using a spouted Pyrex measuring cup or a funnel helps
getting all these pops into their molds.



SAMOA POPS
[makes 4]

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup vegan chocolate chips
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 3/4 cups coconut milk
- 1/4 cup organic finely shredded unsweetened coconut



DIRECTIONS:
Melt the chocolate & oil in double boiler or a bowl placed over a small pot of boiling water just until it melts. Turn off the heat & whisk in the coconut milk. Mix in coconut shreds until they are incorporated evenly throughout. Make sure the mixture is cool before pouring it into your colds to freeze. These need a little more freezing time than the other two pops we made.

We found these to be extra thick & rich like fudgecicles, if you want a thinner pop you can dilute it with more coconut milk.

VARIATIONS: use the first 3 ingredients (or swap coconut milk for almond milk) and add:
- curry (yes really!)
- cinnamon & hot pepper for a South American twist
- almond extract & crushed almonds
- dried pitted cherries