I haven’t been cooking much due to the recent heat wave, and have been living off of cereals, fruit salad, chips and salsa, and smoothies. I know, not the most balanced diet…but when I’m out working and running around all day in the 90F heat, the last thing I want to do when I get home is to turn the stove on.
My sister gave me a full set of Zoku Quick Pop Maker for my birthday this year, completed with all kinds of accessories to make cute pops with designs. It makes a batch of pops in 10 minutes and makes up to 3 batches with one freeze, so perfect for this warm weather!
A few personal favorites to make are watermelon-mint, fudgesicles (milk + nutella), and coffee/latte. Today I got a little bit fancy and decided to layer the coffee pops and also try out the angle tray for titling layering effects. If you don’t have a Zoku pop maker, use dixie cups + sticks or any popsicle molds (without lids) that you have. Freeze and wait for at least one hour in between each layers. If using a Zoku pop maker, wait 2-4 minutes between each layer. It is unlikely that you can make 3 batches with one freeze since the process for each batch takes longer.
Coffee layer: Brew some strong coffee, chill if you have time. Otherwise add some ice cubes to bring the temperature down. Sweeten with sugar or honey to your liking. (Note: I usually don’t like a lot of sugar and sweetness in my coffee, but beware, unsweetened frozen coffee really doesn’t taste good… I don’t think I’ll freeze coffee straight up again, will mix with milk or cream from now on.)
Latté layer: Half coffee + half milk/cream. Sweeten to your liking, and a pinch of cinnamon.
Cream layer: I cheated and used some melted vanilla ice cream. Usually I use a mixture of heavy cream (or whole milk) + sweetened condensed milk + few drops of vanilla extract.
Some ideas for variations – Mocha (with chocolate), add orange zest, a splash of bailey or amaretto- which makes it a “poptail”! (pop + cocktail)
{with the tilting block, see picture below for result}
Here are some more enticing coffee pops recipes, you know, for those days when you just really need a super icy caffeinated kick on a hot summer day.
Cin Cin, Let's Eat! 
These sound perfect! Now I need to get a Zoku…
fancy pops! i like!
Wow – I need this. Great shots, too!
Both the layering and tilting look so nice ! Very fancy ! Did you try to make something that has inside layer and outside layer? I am wondering how that would be done using the Zoku. I’ve seen pictures …
Those really are utterly gorgeous! So impressive.
I love the tilted look. These look really great.
So fancy with the daigonals (fanc(y)sicle – like whimsical, fancy popsicle). Love poptail! The popsicle-maker looks like a toaster, too, like your popsicles are about to pop up. I bet even when you eat cereal, you snazz it up. 🙂
Strange recipe, but I want to try it at summer 🙂