Throughout the history of cooking, there has been one essential tool in the hand of every chef – the knife. Without it, we couldn’t cut through meat or vegetables to get them down to the right size for cooking and eating. Continue reading
We’ve been having a lot of fun with our popsicle mold these past few weeks. The weather has been very warm and it’s nice to come inside and cool off with a popsicle. This post is a collection of the popsicle recipes we’ve used lately. Click on the photos if you’d like to see a larger view of the popsicles.
Strawberry Watermelon Popsicles
Adapted from myself
Makes enough for 4-6 popsiclesIngredients
About 1 cup chopped seedless watermelon
A handful of fresh hulled strawberries
A splash of lemon or lime juice
About 3-5 tablespoons powdered sugar, to tasteMethod
Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for at least 5 hours.
Mocha Popsicles
Adapted from Eating Out Loud
Makes enough for about 8 popsiclesThese were really yummy! I never had thought about freezing coffee for popsicles, but I’m glad I came across this recipe. The white tip is a mix of sweetened condensed milk, whole milk and vanilla extract, while the coffee part is strong brewed coffee, sweetened condensed milk and cocoa powder. Everything was perfect with these, except I added about 1/2-1 teaspoon more cocoa powder.
Creamy Jello Popsicles
Adapted from SparkRecipes
Makes enough for 4 popsiclesNow these were really interesting. I wasn’t sure what sort of texture these were going to have, knowing that Jello is supposed to be wobbly. These popsicles are a mix of Jello (the small box), water and vanilla yogurt. The texture was only barely wobbly and the popsicles do not freeze solid – you can bite straight into one. I would recommend that you freeze these overnight and be careful when unmolding them, as the sticks can easily pop out of the popsicle itself, leaving the popsicle inside the mold (I know from experience!)!
The red popsicle picture above is raspberry, but we’ve also made an alien-green lime one!
Jello Pudding Pops
Adapted from Recipezaar
Makes enough for about 5 popsiclesThese popsicles are very similar in texture to the regular Jello popsicles above, but much creamier. You’ll need to be extra careful with unmolding these, and also I’d recommend freezing these overnight as well. I’d love to try these with banana pudding, or with a vanilla-chocolate swirl!
So I lied – I do have some cupcakes for you after all! Watermelon ones – cross section is pictured so it would look more watermelony.
I thought it was a cute idea that I had for these watermelon cupcakes, so had to try it out. I used Magnolia Bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe, but halved it to get one dozen cupcakes instead of two (though I ended up with 14, actually). I added 10 drops of red food coloring (give or take a drop) and 1/4 cup plus a tablespoon or so of mini chocolate chips.
I then used the watermelon frosting I found here. Though the taste of the frosting was nice with a subtle hint of watermelon, I was disappointed that it was too liquidy to pipe at all, even after refrigerating, so had to just sort of pour it on the cupcake. Because there is cream cheese in the frosting, I am refrigerating the leftover cupcakes so it should harden up a little, I presume. And even though the watermelon juice turned the frosting a light pink color, I wanted it green so added a few drops of green food coloring to turn it this pastel green color.
I’d like to find a watermelon frosting that is pipeable, so if anyone knows of one, please tell me! If I could have piped this I would have liked to split the frosting into two parts – one the light pink color and the other the light green color, then put the two colors into a pastry bag to get a swirl effect. Also what might be nice is a cute little slice of watermelon made out of fondant, placed on top of the cupcake.
Thank you to Cupcakes Take The Cake for posting about my watermelon cupcakes on their blog!
