“Better-For-Them” Homemade Popsicles
Better for them homemade popsicles for kids highlights.
- Homemade popsicles for kids can be a quick, easy to make, healthy & delicious treat.
- Ingredients like pureed fresh fruit and sugar-free yogurt in homemade popsicles will add extra nutrients to your little one's diet.
- Homemade breast milk popsicles are wonderful for teething babies.
Why we love homemade popsicles for kids.
Many of us have fond childhood memories of chasing an ice cream truck or stopping at the corner store to pick up a popsicle on a hot summer day.
Remember Otter Pops, the frozen plastic squeeze tube filled with artificial color, refined sugar, and water? Getting an Otter Pop while playing outside in the summer was the height of childhood bliss!
We want our children to have these same sweet summertime memories, but perhaps without artificial colors and refined sugar. So, we like to make what we call "better-for-you" popsicles. These popsicles not only take just a few minutes to make, but they also add nutrients to your kid's day.
Ingredients like unsweetened yogurt make them creamy while providing protein and gut-healthy probiotics. Pureed bananas provide a soft bite while adding fiber, potassium, folate, and antioxidants to your child's diet. Mangos are bursting with flavor and are a great source of vitamins A and C as well as folate, B6, iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamin E.
A few homemade popsicle-making tips.
Depending on the ingredients, popsicles take at least four to six hours to freeze. Overnight freezing is your best bet and gives everyone something to look forward to the next day.
Sometimes we cut a small slit in the bottom of a cupcake liner and placed the popsicle stick through the bottom to catch the juice. It's saved us a few times from unwanted messes!
We make our popsicles in these durable, BPA-free silicone popsicle molds you can buy from Amazon.
Here are our favorite ideas and recipes for our “better-for-them” homemade popsicles for kids.
- Mix ½ water and ½ fruit juice, and then freeze in the molds. We love orange or grapefruit juice because it has less sugar.
- Puree frozen fruit and then re-freeze in the molds. Mango and watermelon work excellent for this.
- Blend a no added sugar yogurt, a splash of milk, and some pureed fruit, and then freeze in molds.
- Freeze breast milk in popsicle molds. These are hydrating for breast-fed babies and also soothe sore teething gums.
- Make double the amount of your favorite smoothie and use half of it to make popsicles! Then enjoy the other half as a smoothie for yourself.
- Blend blueberries and coconut milk and then freeze in the molds.
- Blend blueberries, watermelon, strawberries, and flavor with a touch of lime juice and vanilla extract, and then freeze in molds.
- Rinse grapes, pull off the stem, blend until smooth and then freeze in molds.
'From our families to yours, Joana + Lauren'