Recipes :: Easy Homemade Popsicles

For my daughter’s end of the year kindergarten carnival party I signed up to bring popsicles.  Having my masters in nutrition has helped me to decipher through ingredient lists to see what our family should and shouldn’t eat.  And to be honest, I am always a bit disgusted at the snacks – even the ones who claim to be “healthy” snacks that companies put out on the shelves for our kids.  I grabbed some popsicles that I use to eat as a kid and looked at the ingredient list on my way up to the checkout.  I didn’t like that High Fructose Corn Syrup was listed in the label as well as food colorings and preservatives – so I ended up purchasing the more expensive fruit bars that didn’t list all these chemicals but still contained too much sugar.  At this point, I was late for the party so I made a pact to myself to find some healthy and  easy-to-make popsicles we could enjoy making together this summer!  I found some wonderful recipes and even a popsicle maker from Williams & Sonoma that make them in less than 10 minutes!  That’s my kind of machine as who wants to wait four hours waiting for the popsicles to freeze!  But there are cheaper ways to go as IKEA has an adorable popsicle maker for less than $10.  Just check them out online at www.ikea.com.

 Easy Homemade Popsicles:

Nourishing Meals blog offers some recipes to try out via: whole fruit popsicles.  I love the watermelon idea as we can’t seem to get enough of this vegetable (yes, it is considered to be a vegetable in the same family as pumpkins).  Scroll below Nourishing Meals “Watermelon Popsicles” Recipe for more frozen treats to try! You can find more information on popsicles and frozen treats by reading more here: Laura’s Best Recipes    

Healthy and Colorful Popsicles:

Chez Beeper Bebe provides a great recipe for the popsicles pictured above.  I love how they don’t have any corn syrup and free of other chemicals that shouldn’t be in our diets!  She lists her recipes here: Eat This: Homemade Popsicles.  The recipes to make the popsicles pictured at the top of the post can be found in this cookbook that Kelly of Chez Beeper Bebe recommends: Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It by Karen Solomon.

Strawberry Shortcake Popsicles:

The Strawberry Shortcake Popsicles recipe can be found at Babble: Strawberry Shortcake Popsicles: A Surprising Treat.  Image courtesy of Babble and adapted from Bakers Royale. For more yummy and healthy popsicle recipes try Super Healthy Kids – they have a LOT of choices [and variations] for frozen treats and popsicles using fruits, fruits and veggies and even peanut butter! (the link to Super Healthy Kids takes you directly to this section and there are four pages! YUM)

Quick Popsicle Maker:

Williams & Sonoma has a quick popsicle maker by Zoku and can be found here: ZOKU Popsicle Maker

Have fun making this childhood Summer staple!