We’re interrupting our usual schedule of kids’ activities, parenting inspiration, and family-friendly food to bring you 31 days of Kids Kitchen Recipes and Activities.
Ice pops are a highlyrequested summer snack around here, and thankfully they are super quick and easy for the kids to make! We had some fun yesterday creating these fun ice pops and wanted to share them with you — along with a free printable for all three ice pop recipes!
We have a Zoku Ice Pop Maker, which makes some of these ice pops a bit easier to create, but with a bit of creativity you can make these in a regular ice pop mold.
Like an ice cream machine, the Zoku needs to be frozen about 24 hours before you need to use it – which I first thought was a bit annoying, but really, most ice pops need to be frozen for 8 hours or more to really set up, and the fact that the Zoku ice pops are ready within 5-10minutes, you are less likely to encounter a child who has changed their mind about what flavour they want.
(I’m sure you could get away with freezing it for less than the recommended time, but I haven’t played around with that much — we once froze it for 19 hours and it worked fine.)
1. Yogurt-Filled Mango Ice Pops
These are actually kefir (or “yogurt drink”) filled ice pops, but yogurt would work in a pinch. One of the warnings on the Zoku manual is that yogurt- or milk-based ice pops will stick to the mold and not work, so I wanted to come up with a twist that allowed us to still have a yogurt ice pop.
Start off by pouring mango juice (or pureed mango mixed with apple juice and a tablespoon of honey) into the ice molds. Within about 5 minutes, the outside of the ice pops will become frozen and the centers will still be liquid.
Using a straw, have one of the children drink the juice from the center of the ice pop to make it hollow. Carefully pour in the yogurt drink and let it set, about 5 more minutes.
After the yogurt layer sets, you can add a bit of mango juice to cover it, but I didn’t see a need.
2. Raspberry Apple Kiwi Ice Pops
This is such a fun ice pop for the kids to help with. I had my littlest chef start out by squishing some raspberries in a plastic bag.
Ella ran the mashed up raspberries through a sieve to separate the seeds from all of that lovely raspberry juice. You could alternatively puree your raspberries. Meanwhile, I cut the kiwis into 1/4″ slices with my helper.
Next, we mixed the raspberries’ juice with some apple juice and a tablespoon of honey.
Although the manual says to place the ice pops stick into the mold first before putting anything in the mold cavity, we placed a couple of slices of kiwi into each ice pop mold and then used the stick to smoosh them down if needed. (The fruit stuck to the sides of the mold right away so don’t expect to be too precise in your fruit placement.)
We poured the raspberry-apple juice mixture into the molds and it took about 8 minutes to set.
3. Diagonal Ice Pops
This was the most fun ice pop to make, though I would recommend making this one first in your line-up.
We placed the Zoku on its side, propped up by my day planners, and then inserted the sticks, before pouring in the raspberry-apple juice until it touched the fill line on the bottom. It took about 5 minutes to set, and then I placed the Zoku upright and had one of the children pour in mango juice until it reached the opposite fill line.
We left these ice pops in a bit longer, to prevent any possibility of them separating, about 15 minutes total from start to finish, but 10 minutes would probably be fine.
Download your free printable ice pops recipes here.
Today, Jen from Kitchen Counter Chronicles is sharing Summer Cherry Yogurt Popsicles!
Check out the rest of our 31 Days of Kids Kitchen Series here.
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