From my kitchen: ice pops

I just discovered that the term "Popsicle" is a registered trademark - the proper name for the juice treats in my freezer is "ice pop."  I also discovered that the first Popsicle was an accident.  According to Wikipedia, "The first ice pop was created by accident in 1905 when 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda, water and a stirring stick in a cup on his porch in cold weather."  Really.  I love me some Wikipedia.

Whatever you call them, I grew up thinking ice pops were a treat of the highest order.  Up there with sugar cereal and chewing gum, which is weird, since we weren't allowed to eat sugar cereal or chewing gum, and I think my mom made ice pops on a pretty regular basis.  Maybe they felt like such a treat because they were so very good on a really hot day.  And those long hot days of summer feel so very long when you are a kid.

My mom had a Tupperware mold, made of that oddly translucent and flexible plastic that older Tupperware  was made from.  It had little "sticks" with a loop for your finger on the end that stuck through a lid that snapped onto the open end of the mold.  I don't know how my mom got them closed without spilling the contents everywhere. I remember that the stick was just a little short and you had to be careful not to lose the middle of the pop as it started to melt.  I also remember having very sticky fingers often.  Mom probably made plain juice pops sometimes, but mostly I remember yogurt pops.  The ice crystals form differently in dairy than in juice and I remember peeling apart the flat crystals with my teeth before they melted.  

Yes, I was an odd child.

Last Christmas my brother found an ice pop mold on my Amazon wish list that I had honestly totally forgotten putting there.  And so there it was under the tree, totally out of season.  I would have loved to have ice pops in my freezer the summer before, when I was all queasy and hot all the time, but in December they didn't seem quite like the thing. So the mold sat on the floor in my office for months, still in the box, until I read a blog post early in the summer about "treats" and I flashed on a memory of sitting on the porch steps eating an ice pop, our German shepherd dog Elsa sleeping in the shade at my feet. And then I really wanted an ice pop.  So I picked up some peach juice the next time I was at Trader Joe's and filled up those molds. I realize now in retrospect that it was the *juice* that was the treat when I was young, not the fact that it was frozen.

And you know?  It doesn't really get so hot here and I don't have a dog to keep me company, but eating that ice pop sitting in the sun on the front step was just as good as I remembered. 

Simple juice pops were just about my speed with a newborn in the house, but when I started looking at recipes for yogurt pops I found some really yummy recipes.  These blackberry-honey-yogurt pops are next up to try, now that blackberries are in season. There are a couple others in that round up that I'm going to have to come back to, like the sangria pops. There is a whole genre of boozy ice pop recipes should one care to go that route.

Then there are the ice pops made from drinks with a creamy consistency, like horchata pops (yum!) or chai tea pops. 

Another good seasonal option are the strawberry-basil pops in this Mark Bittman article in the NY Times. He has some interesting savory suggestions, too, though I have to say that the tomato-cucumber pop just sounds too much like frozen gazpacho.

This list of herbed and spiced pops got me thinking about how I could use the herbs in my garden in interesting ways.  Like lemonade with lavender.  Apple juice and rose geranium. Pineapple juice with basil or thyme. White tea and lemon verbena. Lime and rosemary.

Now all I need is for our Indian summer to arrive and burn off this fog that's been hanging around all week.

 

 

Comments

[danielle]

my grandparents had those same Tupperware molds! I loved them! my pepere used to make pudding 'ice pops' and this was when "pudding pops" came out and Bill Cosby was doing the commercial for them - I'm dating myself aren't I? ah, nostalgia...