To The Delicious Ice Cream!

Ice lollies are the easiest you can make. In this article I am going to explain the reasons for popsicles and what you need to know to be able to formulate your own ice pops, taking into account the characteristics of the ingredients.

You don’t need a lot of equipment or special ingredients, to start just a few lollipop molds, have space in the freezer and a normal blender.

The purpose is to make popsicles or ice lollies with fruit flavors using the fresh or frozen fruits or their juices. Once frozen, we will have refreshing ice creams much cheaper and healthier than any commercial variety and, in addition, they can always be to our liking because for that we control the entire process, from the purchase of fruits to freezing.

It is tremendously easy and suitable for those who do not even know how to boil pasta yet;)

Ingredients: fruits

To use them in the poles we can beat them, make them into pieces, make them puree, liquefy them, put them in slices … it is best to choose the process that best suits the fruit that we are going to use and whenever possible, do not discard the pulp , which contains a lot of fiber and helps to give ice cream a creamy texture. For example, if we make orange popsicles, make it from orange juice made with a juicer and adding the pulp, not removing it.

Fleshy fruits make creamier popsicles. For example: banana, peach, nectarine and mango. It is not only because of its lower amount of water, it is because of its texture in general, much more tender and fluffy. In addition, they are the easiest fruits to use if you are a beginner, since success is assured.

You just have to peel the fruits, cut them into pieces, beat them with the blender, pour into the t-shirts and let them freeze.

Always choose ripe fruits that are sweet (try a bite first).

It has no mystery: the less amount of water, the less amount of large ice crystals will form during the freezing of the pole.

These large ice crystals are what make the ice lollies very hard, so as long as we prevent them from forming, we will have poles that are more pleasant to the touch.

Colour

The color is very attractive and should immediately suggest what flavor the polo is. Using fruits and fresh fruit juices we will obtain bright and attractive colors, but we can also combine colors in the same pole so that they contrast, for example half strawberries (intense red) and half kiwi (intense green). The more fruit we use, the brighter the color will be, the tastier it will appear (as well as being so).

There are fruits that contain pigments that are sensitive to the pH of the medium, and we can play with it. For example blueberries and raspberries. In acidic media they turn a more intense pink color. We can beat the blueberries as is and add a little lime, lemon or apple juice to make them a strong pink color or leave them as is so that the tone is more bluish.

If we want a polo to have several colors, we can first put the puree of one fruit, freeze and then completely fill the shirt with the second fruit puree. That way we will have a polo that is half of one flavor and half of another. We can also do it in several colors, you just have to let the layers freeze enough so that when adding the next one they do not mix.

Another way to make colored popsicles is to start with a light colored base and add small pieces of colored fruit.

For example, we can put orange or lemon juice in the shirts and a lot of small pieces of kiwi, pineapple, cherry, nectarine, plum, papaya, banana, strawberries, etc. Remember that these popsicles will be tougher, but the pieces of fruit will be more tender and chewy.

Sweetness

Fruits are naturally sweet and their sugars lower the freezing point, so they remain more tender than the ice cream itself when we add them in pieces (unless they are green or are not very sweet).
They are also healthy ingredients that contain vitamins and minerals, so when it comes to making popsicles it is the best option we have.

If we need an extra sweetness, we can add well-beaten ripe dates (pitted), which is another fleshy and very sweet fruit.

Texture

Some fruits are high in water and low in sugar and can make our popsicles rock hard. For example watermelon. In that case we can use crushed or beaten watermelon together with very small pieces of the fruit itself to prevent it from becoming a block of ice that is difficult to eat. And that the pieces are small, otherwise the texture of the pole could be sandy.

In these cases we can also add other ingredients to improve the polo. For example, one or two tablespoons of lemon juice, which highlight the sweetness of the watermelon, or ingredients with a lower proportion of water such as natural soy yogurt or banana (if we want to mix with another fruit).

Some fruits can undergo some type of transformation before going to the poles to improve their flavor and / or texture. For example , heat improves the flavor of pineapple and cherries, but it does not work so well with strawberries (unless we make a kind of jam).

We can chop or crush the pineapple and boil it for 8-10 minutes over low-medium heat and let it cool before putting in the shirts and freezing to have poles with more pineapple flavor and less water content (more tender).

The frozen fruits are also good choices for the poles, especially when fruits are not in season. In some supermarkets we can find frozen raspberries and strawberries. They can be whipped directly and added to the t-shirts, they will freeze very quickly.