I was going to make a post about ways to use up fresh mint in your garden. I planted fresh mint last year and it came back this year, and spread like mad. It really does grow like a weed.  This mojito pop, is one way you can use up the fresh mint in your garden. You make a simple syrup out of sugar and water and add some mint to it. Let that sit in the syrup for about 30 minutes and your syrup will be infused with mint flavor. You can pretty much do that with any herb or flavor you wish.

This is a virgin mojito pop. There’s no vodka in it. You could certainly add in the vodka, but you have to watch how much you add or else it might not freeze properly. I was going to make a bloody mary ice pop, but decided not to after I tried a little bit of bloody mary mix this weekend. Bloody Marys are not for me, that’s all I’m going to say. I prefer sweet fruity drinks like mojitos. What’s your favorite alcoholic beverage? Who knows, maybe I’ll turn it into an ice pop.

Ingredients from Everyday Food

1 1/4 cup of sugar
1 small bunch of mint, plsu 10 leaves
1 cup fresh lime juice, plus 10 very thin half-moon slices

1. In a small saucepan, bring sugar and 2 cups of sguar and 2 cups water to a boil over high. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves.
Remove from heat, stir in mint, and let syrup cool. 30 minutes

2. Pour syrup through a fine-mesh sieve into a medium bowl, pressing on solids. Discard, the solids. Stir the lime juice into the syrup. Fill ten 3 ounce ice-pop
molds three-quarters full with syrup. Freeze until slushly, 45 minutes. With an ice-pop stick submerge 1 lime slice and 1 mint leaf in each pop. Insert ice-pop sticks and freeze until solid.

per ice pop- 103 cals, 0 g fat, 0 g protein, 27 g carbs, 0 g fiber

I love how pretty these ice pops look and they’re so good too. I think they’re by far the best ice pop recipe, I tried thus far. The recipe calls for a cup of heavy cream, but I think almond milk or a low fat milk will work just fine. The Greek yogurt makes them really creamy. Use agave nectar or honey to sweeten them if you don’t want to use sugar.

This came from a Martha Stewart magazine with like 50 different ice pop recipes in it, and now I want to try every single one of them. Especially the mojito and tropical sunset pops. Be on the look out for more ice pop recipes in the near future.

Ingredients from Martha Stewart

1 cup of blueberries or mixed berries

3/4 cup of sugar

1 cup of heavy cream.

8 oz greek yogurt

1. In a small sauce pan, bring blueberries and 1/4 cup of sugar to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer, crushing berries against side of pan with a wooden spoon, until mixture is syrupy, 3 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl and refrigerate until cool. 30 minutes.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of sugar, yogurt, and cream until sugar dissolves, about 2 minutes. Pour yogurt and blueberry mixtures, alternating them, into eight 3-ounce ice-pop molds, making swirl shapes with a knife. Freeze for up to 6 hours.

It’s been so hot and muggy here lately, I’ve been making a lot of cool summer treats. Besides these, I have some strawberry ice cream ready to be churned in my fridge. The temperature has been sticking around in the 80′s and the dogs love to go in their pool outside. We’ve had the air conditioner on a lot too. I’m already day dreaming of treats that I can make this fall that involve apples and pumpkin, and have already book marked a lot of them.

If you don’t own any popsicle molds you just need to get some dixie cups (any size) and some sticks. Just puree any kind of fruit you like with some honey/agave nectar/sugar and freeze. I let our dogs lick one of these and they loved it too! They pretty much like any kind of fruit, I just don’t give them fruit with any pit in it.

Ingredients

4 cups of watermelon pureed

1 tablespoon of honey

Directions

Puree fruit and honey in a food processor. Poor in to cups or popsicle molds and freeze until set. Serve cool. These pospciles are only 1 point a piece if doing Weight Watchers.

I can’t get over how pretty these popsicles are! I love them. I just cut up some fruit into small enough pieces that would fit into my popsicle molds and then poured in about 3/4 of a can of coconut water into a bowl. Coconut water is kind of tasteless, actually. You can find it in the Ethnics food aisle in your grocery store and it comes in a regular soda can.

I actually found out that the Toroni Coconut Syrup has a better taste than the coconut water and I recommend using that instead. That is great because, I’ve had different flavored toroni syrups down in our liquor pantry for years, now and can’t really figure out what to do with them! Or… you could make your own simple syrup. Just make sure that whatever you use with the fruit is clear, so that you can still see the fruit. Make sense? Wonder how you would make a veggie popsicle???

I first saw these here and then couldn’t find the proper link to give credit too.

Chocolate and kiwi, where have you been all my life? Any fruit dipped in chocolate is good, but have you tried chocolate with kiwi? If not, I suggest that you run to store right now. I almost forgot that kiwi existed, until I saw these popsicles on pinterest the other day ago and had to try these. This also gives me the idea of  just freezing kiwis to use for smoothies.  Oh, and now I have some ideas to make for smoothies later on now too. Guess where I’m headed off to?

All you do to make these is peel off the skin if you like the skin, you can leave it on.  Make sure that you cut the kiwis in big enough slices, so that you can fit a popsicle stick in the middle of the kiwi and freeze. I put mine all down on a cookie sheet.  After about an hour you can dip them in melted chocolate and then re-freeze again until the chocolate has set. Pretty simple and tasty!

I found these popsicles at  Showfood Chef’s blog.

Calories 112 | Fat 6.4g | Carbs 16.04g | Fiber 1.8g | Protein 1.8g

Points Plus: 3

Serves: 8

I bought these lovely Tovolo groovy ice pop molds from amazon.com a long with a really nice camera bag for my Nikon D60 camera. I have 4 lenses now and the bag can hold up to about 10 different sized lenses. It even holds a 14 in notebook computer and tripod. It will be nice for going on trips. I don’t know what I like more, my camera bag or these popsicle molds. They’re a lot better than the previous popsicle molds that I had gotten. Those were too tiny and the caps didn’t fit well.

These popsicle molds just have 4 ingredients:  1 box of instant pisachio pudding mix, milk, pistachios, and strawberries. Another perfect flavor match. It’s almost like a 5 ingredient fix recipe, but only 4. You can experiment with so many different flavors when making your own ice pops. I can’t wait to try a coconut/pineapple pop later on or watermelon. As Claire always says on her show “BYOC.” Which means Be Your Own Chef.

Nutrition: Calories 128 | Total Fat 3.52g | Total Carbohydrate 21.8g | Dietary Fiber 1.3g | Protein 4.06g

Points Plus: 4

Ingredients

1 box of instant pistachio pudding

2 cups of milk

1/4 cup of chopped pistachios

1 cup of pureed strawberries.

Directions

1. Puree strawberries in food processor until smooth. Mix jello and milk together until thickened and add in chopped pistachios to the pudding mix. Layer the ice pops first with the pistachio pudding, then the strawberries, and the pistachio pudding again. Cool in freezer over night and they’re ready to serve the next day.