Today’s popsicle began (as most pleasant things in life do) with a cheese plate. It was Monday and I was enjoying one of MJ’s famously lavish spreads (simply calling it a cheese plate feels reductive). Earlier in the day, a visiting friend had asked if this week’s popsicle could be spicy. As I wandered through differing cheese softnesses, cracker brittlenesses, and fruit sweetnesses, I came upon a homemade nectarine jalapeño jam. After smearing an indelicate amount on a flat cracker and topping it with brie, I made up my mind. This week’s popsicle would be nectarine jalapeño. Because I love the smell of cooking jalapeño, I decided to make it roasted nectarine jalapeño. Then I piled some marinated tomatoes on top of a thick slice of cheddar and felt grateful for cheese. I am giving a recipe, because that is what I have vowed to do, but this popsicle demands that you be the driver of your own fate. If you want a popsicle that hints at heat, don't leave your jalapeño in the syrup for too long. If you want to weep as you eat your popsicle, leave the jalapeño in the syrup for a long time. If you don't know what spice level you want, make a watermelon popsicle and don't look back.
Roasted Nectarine Jalapeño Popsicles Yield: 6 popsicles | Prep Time: 30-40 minutes | Total Time: 7 hours Ingredients 6 nectarines 1 jalapeño ½ c sugar Juice of 1 lemon Directions Preheat oven to 300°F. Cut nectarines in half, remove the pit, and place flesh down on a baking sheet. Cut the stem off of the jalapeño and add to the baking sheet. Roast for 20 minutes or until everything is tender. In a saucepan, bring sugar and ½ c water to a boil. Place roasted jalapeño into syrup and let simmer until the syrup has taken on desired spiciness. Remove jalapeño. In a blender, puree roasted nectarines and lemon juice to your desired level of chunkiness. Mix together puree and spicy syrup. Pour mixture into molds and freeze until solid.
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In all fairness, I was afraid of a popsicle (this week I got inspiration from this recipe) whose name so proudly displayed a distinctly savory dairy. But, with 50 popsicles ahead of me and a lot of yogurt on my horizon, I figured that to fear would also be to limit myself. Yogurt is safe, yes. But a year from now, do I want to look at a gallery of photos that boasts solely milk and yogurt bases? No! Bring on the ricotta, the buttermilk, and the sour cream. This dairy-based pep talk (which took place at 7:45 am on a Wednesday in a slowly awakening Los Gatos) gave my stomach pre-pain and my heart courage. A few web surfs and powered-up steps around the kitchen later, I found myself mixing sour cream and almond milk together in a bowl. I am glad I did it - I predict this popsicle will be remembered as one of my favorites of the project. It is very possible that I love this popsicle so much because I love blueberries, but I think that the sour cream transforms the straightforward sweetness of a blueberry in season into a more dynamic, present flavor. The pep talk sent me into such a fervor that I almost considered making a pair popsicle - blackberry buttermilk - to join the blueberry popsicle this week. But then I reeled that in. There will be time enough for all of the above. The things that are essential in this recipe are that you use store-bought almond milk (this pains me to say, as being fancy and having lots of free time, I am team make-it-at-home), as the added sweetness helps to tame the sour cream, and that you freeze the berries before you add them to the mix. It doesn’t matter if you purchase blueberries and then freeze them or skip that and buy pre-frozen blueberries, but you must have berries that will be ready to shed some liquid, sweetness, and color to the popsicle as soon as they are added to the other liquid.
Blueberry Sour Cream Popsicles Yield: 5 popsicles | Prep Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 6 hours Ingredients ½ c sour cream ¾ c store bought almond milk (I recommend the vanilla flavored, sugar added variety) 1 c frozen blueberries Directions Mix sour cream, almond milk, and frozen blueberries to combine. The frozen blueberries should let off juice to color the mixture. Pour mixture into molds and freeze until solid. For most of our childhood, Eve and I spent the summer traversing the open fields and redwooded trails of Sanborn Park at Walden West, an outdoor camp for nature-loving children. During the day we would learn about native plants and animals, fling arrows at targets, make face paint with rocks found at the river, and pelt each other with dodge balls. At night we would lie in our sleeping bags, trying not to crinkle the tarp above us, and stare at the stars, hoping summer would never end. A hallmark of Walden West was the requirement that each child choose a "nature name" to be their given name for the entirety of the camp. It did not take long for Eve and me, inseparable in life and camp, to choose matching nature names. We decided to make our names citrus-themed. I, towering over Eve at the time, naturally became “lemon” and Eve, small but mighty, was “lime.” This week’s popsicle took me back to the sweaty, friendship bracelet days of camp. Nothing about the popsicle involves anything to do with the sunscreeny memory of being eleven and covered in mosquito bites. However, our time as Lemon and Lime forged an intense bond with the two sour fruits and the memories bring me a smile any time I use a lemon or lime. This week's popsicle is not trying to do anything beyond being itself: lime—a bit sweet, but mostly tangy. I decided to add loads and loads of zest, because it provided a zing I felt was lost with only the juice. However, the zest joined together to form a dark line in the pop during the freezing process, so if looks are important to you, strain out the zest or leave it out altogether. Lemon will have its fair share of coverage in the project but for now, it is Lime’s turn.
Lime Popsicles Yield: 6 popsicles | Prep Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 6 hours Ingredients Zest and juice of 3 limes ⅔ c sugar Directions Zest and then juice 3 limes into a heavy saucepan. Add 4 cups water and the sugar. Bring mixture to a boil for 8 minutes. Let cool, and then pour mixture into molds and freeze until solid. To suspend a lime slice, pour molds halfway and let harden for an hour before adding lime slice and filling mold to the top. Freeze until solid. In the summer of 2007, Eve and I threw a watermelon-themed party. The party was held in Nana’s backyard, underneath an orange tree that produced thick-skinned oranges. As demanded by our being young, without a phone, and deeply in summer, the party’s guests were family members and a coerced random neighbor who brought pineapples in cottage cheese as her party contribution. The party was lively and sticky and ended with a general agreement from the group that watermelon is delicious and can certainly bear the weight of being an entire party’s theme. This week, I return to the watermelon. Popsicle #1 tries to represent the sweet and cool flavor of a watermelon without carrying with it the (sometimes) upsettingly grainy texture. To achieve this, I strained the juice before molding it. “Molding it” is a hip new term I am introducing to the project. I am going to use it to describe the process of putting the batter (batter? what should I call the pre-molded liquid?) into the molds and then into the freezer. This week’s popsicle is light and sweet and brings with it the joy of a slice of watermelon in summer and the confusion of a neighbor who would bring pineapple to an aggressively watermelon-centered party. Or just the joy of watermelon. Watermelon Popsicles
Yield: 6 popsicles| Prep Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 6 hours Ingredients ½ seedless watermelon, cubed Directions Put cubed watermelon into your blender and blend until uniformly liquid. Strain mixture through fine sieve into pitcher. Pour strained liquid into molds and freeze until solid. |