Popsicles, From Scratch

If you remember my birthday gift from my sister, you will understand why we have been making an abundance of popsicles.  My sister sent me the Zoku quick pop machine.  Now, I know these are not entirely from scratch, like we usually do, but with my traveling and now so other things keeping us busy, this was the closest we got to making things from scratch.  I will say that I have done some cooking at home, but not at the same level as our previous From Scratch Weekends meals.

The first trial with the pop maker, we picked up some random juices.

Here we are getting ready to give it a try.  The contraption gets placed in the freezer for at least 24 hours, and the liquid inside freezes.  When you pour in juice, the cold container will freeze whatever you place in the molds.

Here you can see juice inside.

Ok, we got a little crazy on the first try and attempted right away to make a triple layer pop with all 3 juices.  It is extremely difficult to pour in and it took a few tries to find a meauring cup with a pour spout that would work best.

By try #3, we had the tri-layer almost down 100%.

The next round included these beverages.  Most juices work, and there is room for creativity, but you HAVE to play around with this first to get ideas. 

It can take anywhere from 7-15 minutes to freeze depending on what you place in there and if these are the second round or first. You can do 3 at a time, and after the first set of 3, you are able to immediately do 3 more. Additional sticks are available for purchase because 9 can be done one a single freeze.

Here is a plain pink lemonade pop.  These were really good.

For my next pop, I rinsed off some frozen blueberries.

I added them inside my passion fruit pop.  These were pretty good.

We have been playing with this for a little while now, so last week I was feeling crazy, and gave this combo a go.

I blended up some chocolate milk and banana.

For the first two, I added the peanut butter directly to the mold.  This was kind of a mistake as it was hard to get in and froze all over the place.  After this batch I had to clean this out really well.  By the third pop in this batch, I got smart.  I put the peanut butter into my cup of chocolate milk with banana and stirred it up.  I decided not to put it in the blender so I could keep it as chunky PB in my pop.  If it was already creamy, it would have been added in the first step.

You can see how the PB is just in chunks.  While it tasted so good, it was a little messy.

My final pop with it all mixed together was very successful, but I did not get a picture of it as ryan ate it as soon as he came home from work.

Well, that is it for my popsicles, although I will be making plenty more.  My review of this product is that it is awesome and totally fun, but it costs $50 so you have to either have some extra spending cash, or know that you will really get good use out of this.  I have traditional popsicles molds and I love them, but the convenience and novelty of the Zoku is pretty cool.  My guess is that I will continue to use both.  My pop molds take up space in the freezer, but that is only some times, and the Zoku it seems is always in there now, and it does take up space.  Still, it is pretty cool to play with. 

Thanks Rachel for the present!

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever heard of the Zoku pop maker?  Do you make your own popsicles at home?  Any suggestions for popsicle flavors?  Any suggestions for a From Scratch Weekend meal?