Popsicles!

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Mindful Drinking Festival

Popsicles. Also known as ice pops, freezer pops, ice lollies, ice blocks, icy poles, ice drops, or chihiros. What could be nicer on a hot summer’s day?

These days, there are many recipes around for alcoholic popsicles, but the non-alcoholic kind are also great, and not only for children either. Jill set up a challenge on Twitter last week for the “best non-sickly-sweet homemade popsicle recipes. Any ideas? Refreshing, not cloying. No booze.” Here are some of the ideas we discovered.

Botonique Virgin Champagne Popsicles

Botonique, the “soft drink for wine lovers” which will be featured at the Festival, has a couple of interesting recipes, for example these “Virgin Champagne Popsicles”.

Ingredients:

Red and black fruit to taste (tip: sliced strawberries look very pretty!).

Botonique.

Preparation:

Slice the fruit and “build” them into the popsicle moulds. Tip: put the fruit in diagonally and use some whole bigger berries like blackberries to distribute fruit all over the mould and still leaving enough room for Botonique.

Pour over Botonique until the moulds are full.

Carefully transfer to the freezer.

Watermelon LolliesWatermelon

BBC Good Food has five “kid-friendly” ice lolly recipes, which should also work for adults, including these watermelon lollies:

Ingredients:

100g hulled strawberries.

60g deseeded watermelon.

Preparation:

Blend the strawberries and watermelon with 130ml water.

Once the puree is smooth, pour into ice lolly moulds, add your sticks and freeze until solid (at least 3 hours or overnight).

This recipe makes 4 standard lollies.

Mango Lassi Popsicles

Buzzfeed has collected 33 “super-cool” recipes (note that some contain alcohol!). I like the sound of these Mango Lassi popsicles (originally from here).

Ingredients:

500ml ripe mango, chopped.

350ml Greek yoghurt.

120ml milk.

2 tablespoons sugar.

A big pinch of ground cardamom.

A pinch of salt.

Preparation:

Combine the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.

Pour the blended mango mixture into the popsicle moulds and freeze until solid, preferably overnight.

This recipe makes from 8 to 12 popsicles, depending on the size of your moulds.

Grapefruit and Cucumber?

As an added bonus, we have “Nic’s hypothetical popsicle” which she shared on Facebook. In her own words: “I haven’t tried this…but grapefruit juice with some cucumber juice (blitz, strain) I reckon would be pretty tasty.” Is anyone willing to try this and let us know how it tastes?