Guest Post: Five popsicles Sara made (with pictures!) 🍭
I know that’s not a popsicle emoji, but it’s close enough.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, Sara Simon, a PhD student in the Chicago area and former data journalist and newsroom technologist shares her popsicle expertise. (She would also like to share that she has an extremely handsome tuxedo cat named Clooney.) Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Editor’s note: For all the recipes in this story, Sara used the Small Stackable Popsicle Mold from Lékué, which come in individual molds of four. She recommends working in small batches of two or three. “It’s nice to have some variety in your freezer,” she says. “Also, if a concept doesn’t work out, you’ll want that failure to fall on just one lost popsicle, not 12.” She also recommends not overfilling your molds, and putting a paper towel on the freezer shelf just in case.
Sara also credits her friend Kara for inspiring her popsicle creations.
“After just a few weeks of making popsicles, I can state with full authority that 1/3 of the joy associated with this hobby lies in creating the popsicles, 1/3 lies in eating them, and an entire 1/3 lies in sending strange and novel recipe ideas back and forth with a fellow popsicle-making friend. May you all find a Kara of your own.”
Without further ado, here are five of Sara’s favorite homemade popsicles:
#1 Coffee
Rating: 10/10
Full disclosure: My first attempt at a coffee popsicle was disastrous. I used cold brew, oat milk, and brown sugar, and the whole thing was just wrong wrong wrong. The cold brew made the popsicle way too bitter, and oat milk, it turns out, has a slightly rancid taste when frozen? These blunders required me to pause and reexamine. I am not a fancy coffee drinker, so why was I trying to make fancy coffee popsicles? The next day, as I brewed my pre-ground Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in my extremely average coffee pot, I decided to try again. I mixed some boring morning coffee, a LOT of half-and-half, and more granulated sugar than seemed reasonable. I chilled the mixture in the fridge for a few hours before pouring into the mold and freezing. It came out perfectly.
#2 Rice pudding with blackberries
Rating: 7.5/10
There was a lot of anticipation built up with this one! I love rice pudding, and I have a vague memory of eating a rice pudding popsicle many years ago, so I knew early on in my popsicle-making career that I’d want to try to make one. Originally, I planned to add chunks of apricot, but it’s peak blackberry season right now, and during peak blackberry season, I feel a stubborn obligation to eat as many blackberries as possible. The grocery store near me makes a great rice pudding. (It’s 2022 and cheats are allowed.) The store’s rice pudding is fairly thick, though, so I watered it down a bit before pouring into the mold. I think I probably could have watered further. This popsicle was slightly dry and chunky, but the flavors were GREAT.
#3 Strawberry with Greek yogurt
Rating: 10/10
Did I eat this popsicle for breakfast? Yes. It is literally just fruit, yogurt, and honey. I cooked the strawberries down on the stove with some water. Once they hit a jam-like consistency, I let them cool down, then I moved them to the fridge to chill. Meanwhile, I mixed a drizzle of honey into plain Greek yogurt. Once the strawberries were chilled, I marbled the strawberries and yogurt into the mold and froze.
#4 Honeydew lime basil
Rating: 9.8/10 (missing 0.2 points only for the lost possibility of a cantaloupe pop)
Honeydew! Lime! Basil! I’d actually planned to use cantaloupe for this one but made a last-minute decision to grab a honeydew instead, so imagine my surprise when I sat down to eat this popsicle, pulled up the New York Times Spelling Bee game on my phone, and saw that the day’s pangram was HONEYDEW. It was meant to be. For this popsicle, I took large chunks of honeydew to a cheese grater, which, in my opinion, is the absolute best tool for making popsicles. (I use it on cucumbers all the time.) I added some water, squeezed in a lime, and chopped up a basil leaf or two. Perfect texture. Perfect flavor. Near perfect popsicle.
#5 Strawberry kiwi
Rating: 10/10
This popsicle was special because I made it on vacation, which is a thing you can do with popsicle molds that are small and portable. A great discovery with this one, found through exploring the kitchen cabinets of the vacation house, was that I could use a citrus reamer on kiwi. I added a splash of water and I think also a squeeze of lime. Then I cut up a strawberry, put the pieces straight into the mold, then poured the kiwi juice around it. What a delight to never be without popsicles. Popsicle vacations forever.
Thank you to Sara for this wonderful guest post! You can find her on Twitter at @sarambsimon, where you can see a picture of Clooney.
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