Whole Fruit Berry-Lime Popsicles

Narshmellow's Note:

In my quest to find a frozen treat that was lighter on sugar and had whole fruits in it as well as being low in calories I started experimenting. I didn’t want to use juice or kool-aid, I wanted the fiber from the fruit and a smooth creaminess in texture. An excellent snack.

• Total Time: 10 hrs 10 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 10 hrs

Ingredients:

Serves: 6

Yield: 6.0 popsicles

• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 3 tablespoons organic sugar
• 1 1/4 cups thawed unsweetened strawberries
• 1 cup frozen unsweetened pineapple chunks
• 1 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries

Directions:

1. Have whatever you’re going to make your popsicles in ready, I use little 5 ounce paper cups and popsicles sticks from the craft store.
2. Measure and thaw out your strawberries for a minute and a half in the microwave. You want them to give to the touch but not be cooked.
3. Put the sugar, lime juice, and strawberries in a blender and start it up on low speed.
4. Quarter your pineapple chunks while it’s blending.
5. Once it’s all mixed don’t stop your blender, open up the little cap on the top and add a few pieces of pineapple letting them blend in a few seconds before adding more. You want it to incorporate, adding it all at once won’t give you a smooth texture. Oh, you might want to put the lid back on quick after each time, it has a tendency to shoot up when you start… but that’s part of the fun, right?.
6. After all the pineapple is thoroughly blended in add a half a handful of raspberries at a time until blended in, repeat until they’re all in, your mixture will start to get thick being semi-frozen… you may have to let it sit and warm up a little as you add the raspberries. Make sure your mixture is blended well before you turn off and taste it. This is key, if it’s too tart for you or too sweet you want to adjust it now. A little more sugar or lime juice, you want to barely taste the lime. If your strawberries are tart this can mean putting in a little sugar for that as well.
7. Pour equal amounts into five paper cups, if your mixture is pretty thick you can push in the sticks and they’ll hold themselves up and put in the freezer. If not freeze them for half an hour to an hour until the sticks will hold up themselves.
8. I let them sit overnight so I know they’re completely frozen but you can judge for yourself when they’re done.

Reviews

[L DJ]

It's the season of colds and sore throats, lots of vitamin C. Made these for my grand children made their day. thanks for sharing.

[Sarah Rivka bat Yocheved]

OMG, these popsicles were quick and easy! My husband loves to eat popsicles in the summer, but I don't like all the ingredients that are added to store-bought popsicles, even ones with real fruit. I found this recipe when searching for lime popsicles, as my husband loves lime, and decided to use it because he also loves pineapple and berries. I made them first thing in the morning. They're not even frozen yet, but I gave my husband some of the liquid to drink, and he said it was good! I liked it, too, and I usually don't even like pineapple, berries, or lime. I can only imagine what they'll be like when they're frozen!

I did make a few changes: I used a natural, non-caloric sweetener called Truvia ( http://www.truvia.com/ ), instead of sugar, as I'm trying to cut down on our sugar intake. I couldn't find any frozen fruit so I just bought fresh strawberries and raspberries and an entire fresh pineapple. I stuck the rasberries in the freezer last night so I'd have some frozen fruit to use. The pineapple looked so pretty on our table! It even inspired me to write a haiku: http://foodiscoveryblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/fruit-haiku.html