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Nine recipes for ice pops you can make at home

 
J.B. Forbes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch   |   TNS Ice pops are inexpensive and easy to make, and the flavor possibilities are plentiful. From left are a Root Beer Float Ice Pop, a Cantaloupe Ice Pop and a Roasted Strawberries and Cream Ice Pop.
J.B. Forbes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch | TNS Ice pops are inexpensive and easy to make, and the flavor possibilities are plentiful. From left are a Root Beer Float Ice Pop, a Cantaloupe Ice Pop and a Roasted Strawberries and Cream Ice Pop.
Published July 9, 2018

By Daniel Neman It's summer, and the sun is relentless, merciless, heartless. The air hangs heavy. Your shirt sticks to your back. Beads of sweat threaten to drip into your eyes.

Air conditioning won't help, and neither will a dip in a pool. Those cool you from the outside in, and you are so overheated you can only find sweet relief from the inside out.

You need a Popsicle.

You can buy them at the store — that's Popsicle with a capital P — and they are perfectly fine and you know exactly what you are getting. Or you can make an ice pop yourself and have something really exciting.

They are easy to make, and fast; after all, all you're doing is freezing some juice and sliding a stick into it. And when you make them yourself, you can add some yogurt or milk to give them an extra flavor boost.

They are also inexpensive, although that depends on the kind of mold you use. You can get ice pop molds from a dollar store for a buck, or you can pick them up at one of those fancy Sur La Sonoma places for 15 times that. And your results will be every bit as good if you just use paper cups, which are practically free.

I got perhaps more ambitious than I should and decided to make nine different types of ice pops. That's the problem with ice pops — they're all so incredibly tempting.

Perhaps the most beautiful version was the Orange Strawberry Sunrise, which looked like one of those old tequila sunrise drinks: bright orange on top slowly deepening to a rich red on the bottom. The taste is pure, too, with orange juice turning satisfyingly into a wonderful strawberry.

Strawberry, as it turns out, is a terrific flavor for pops. I used it in three of my varieties, including the Roasted Strawberries and Cream ones. Roasting the strawberries first draws out depths of flavor that are unsuspected when you eat them raw, especially whey they are first given a light drizzling of balsamic vinegar.

Of course, nothing goes better with strawberries than cream, and you can certainly use cream with this recipe if you like, or coconut milk if you want to make it vegan. But I decided to cut my calories and simply use whole milk.

The result made me very happy, especially the way you can make a gorgeous swirl out of the cream and the roasted strawberries.

Just as attractive and flavorful were Chocolate-Covered Strawberry pops. The ice pop part could not be easier to make; you simply blend together a lot of strawberries with a little water. Once they are frozen, you dip them into a chocolate sauce that hardens.

That Magic Shell-type topping is also simple to make. You just melt together some chocolate and a bit of refined coconut oil, which you can find in the baking aisle of any large grocery store. The only thing you have to remember about it is that, because it hardens when it gets cold, you cannot store it in the refrigerator. But you can keep it at room temperature in an airtight container for a few days.

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I also used the topping with a mint-flavored pop made with chocolate chips and Greek yogurt. The mint flavor came from mint extract, and the lovely green color from food coloring. The recipe says the chocolate topping is optional, but chocolate is such a natural accompaniment to mint that you'll want to do it.

The most refreshing variety I made would have to be the Minty Watermelon recipe. Just the thought of watermelon juice is refreshing, especially when you add fresh mint leaves to the puree.

Those two ingredients alone would make a fine ice pop, but this version goes all out with coconut water, lime juice and just a bit of honey for sweetening. If you are sweltering in the heat, this is definitely the one you want.

Similarly, cantaloupe pops are a frozen version of a spectacularly refreshing drink I have been making it for decades, ever since discovering it in the desert on a day when the temperature had to be above 115 degrees. I love to make a smoothie out of just cantaloupe, a sprinkling of sugar and milk. It's divine. I found a recipe for it that calls for heavy cream, but I just used whole milk again. I don't see how it could have been improved.

And while we are contemplating perfection, here is an idea that is also as great as it can be: root beer floats.

Incredible, right? So try it frozen on a stick. I promise it tastes exactly like a root beer float, only colder.

Perhaps the fruitiest version I made was Pineapple Orange Banana. You can't go wrong with any combination of pineapple, orange and banana, but I would have been even happier if the oranges I had used had more juice in them.

Finally, I am including a recipe for a generic fruit-and-yogurt pop. You can either swirl the fruit part and the yogurt part, as I did with the Roasted Strawberries and Cream, or you can blend the two together, which is what I did with a blueberry yogurt ice pop.

I used frozen blueberries and vanilla yogurt, which turned out a bit more purple than I had expected. But the flavor was grand, with a strong taste of blueberry.

On a hot summer day, could anything be better?