Berry & Cream Striped Popsicles

Behold – beautiful berry and cream popsicles. The bright color and taste of fresh strawberries, raspberries, or blueberries alternating with sweet cream.  And they’re patriotic to boot.  We’ll definitely be whipping these out at our Fourth of July picnic!

We made the berry stripes with fresh strawberries and blueberries, blended and sweetened with just a little vanilla sugar.  The cream layer is delicious full fat Greek yogurt, sweetened with a touch of honey and then thinned to a pourable consistency with cream.  CREAM!  You have to try these. 

The more stripes you manage, the more pretty they become. 

And of course, these are a major hit with the toddler set. All the things they like best, combined in a cool and portable (if a bit messy…) package.

Once they get the hang of how licking is done, they’ll be popsicle fans for life.  We strongly advise outdoor eating.  Seems like this will be critical for at least a few years?

Berry & Cream Striped Popsicles

Yield: about 8 popsicles, depending on the size of your molds

Berry Stripes:

• 1 quart (about 4 cups) fresh berries.  3 cups if you use frozen (but thawed) berries.
• 2 Tbsp vanilla sugar or honey

For the berry stripes we simply blended fresh berries with a little vanilla sugar.  We learned a few things over the course of our experimentation:

• The liquid available in the fresh berries made blending occur very easily. 
• If you choose to use frozen berries (which taste just as good), be sure to let them thaw before blending.  There are two reasons for this:  First, you want liquid to be available to aid in the blending process.  Second, you want the blended berries to be thin enough for pouring into the molds.  They’ll be too thick if they’re still frozen.
• Finally, we recommend your reduce the quantity  of frozen berries used (from 4 cups to 3 cups) because they tend to shrivel a bit and lose some of their volume during the freeze/thaw process.

Cream Stripes:

• 1 1/2 cups full fat Greek yogurt
• 3 Tbsp cream; basically just enough to thin the yogurt out to a pouring-consistency
• 3 Tbsp honey

The main thing you’re doing here is sweetening the Greek yogurt, and then thinning it out enough with cream so that you can easily pour it into popsicle molds.  We chose to use Greek yogurt rather than regular to make the cream strips as creamy as possible, rather than icy or grainy.

Assembly Notes:

For assembly, simple pour alternating stripes of berries and cream into your popsicle molds.  Allow each stripe layer to freeze for at least 30 minutes.
When you’re 2/3 of the way done, it’s time to add the popsicle stick.  Add a layer and freeze for only 15 minutes, or until slushy.  Stick the popsicle stick in and freeze completely, then carry on with the layers. I had the best luck inserting the popsicle stick into the cream layer – it’s easier to push into when semi-frozen.
If you’re doing thin stripes (like we did on the blueberry & cream popsicles), it is best to insert the stick when you’re only 1/2 way done rather than waiting till 2/3.  The thinner stripes have more of a tendency to come apart as the popsicle thaws, so it’s nice to have the popsicle stick farther in there to help hold things together.