Beyond the Table 4: An Ice-Cream Tale and Recipe

At my sister's wedding this week, the kid-friendly photographers were coaxing my son and his cousins to smile. They would use the kid's names instead of the traditional "cheese," have family members make funny faces behind the camera-crew, and the like. During one of my son's solo shots, the photographer said "say ice-cream," and "what's your favorite ice-cream flavor?" Thinking that my son, who is 2 1/2 years old and still not smiling for his shot, did not understand what "flavor" meant, he then moved on to "what's your favorite ice-cream color?" It was at that point that I thought I should jump in and help the photographer out since my little boy has never tasted ice-cream. In the interest of honesty, I wish I could say this was for nutrition reasons, and maybe that would be true as well, but the real reason is that he is allergic to eggs and most ice cream contains eggs.

So I jumped in and said "he has never had ice-cream, say oatmeal." And the smile came across his face as he thought of his favorite breakfast food. Or maybe he was just laughing at us trying to get him to smile. I would like to think it was the former.

Before you feel bad for him for never being able to eat ice-cream, you should know that he has tried ices (Sharon's Sorbet and Frozefruit) and I think he once tried Soy Dream ice-cream. And lately we have also discovered an excellent use for our immersion blender:

Ice-Cream Pops

Update 2011: I have since switched to using organic frozen fruit, and the yogurt pictured was actually a mistake.  We usually buy organic plain full fat, so we decided to make ice cream out of this one.

Recipe:
1. Place plain or vanilla yogurt (full-fat or low-fat) into the immersion-blender cup.
2. Add any of the following: frozen fruit, real fruit, coconut shreds, orange juice, a drop of vanilla extract, etc...
3. Blend it up so that some fruit pieces are still visible.
4. Pour the concoction into freezer pops and freeze for a few hours.
5. Get ready to clean up messy faces.

We made these pops with vanilla low-fat yogurt, frozen blueberries, and coconut shreds. We made it before lunch and they were frozen after dinner.


Beyond the Table:
I hope you enjoy making these "ice-cream pops" as much we do.
If your kids are about two-years old and older, they can even help you pour the yogurt into the cup, place fruit in the cup, push the blender power button while you hold it steady in the cup, and place the freezer pop tops on them (below). They will be delighted to see the yogurt change colors as it blends and even more delighted to eat the colorful pops in a few hours.
A note about BPA: I have no idea whether the freezer molds pictured here contain BPA, since I bought them years ago. But if I buy new molds, I will make sure to buy BPA-free molds such as these pictured here from Amazon. However, I am still searching for BPA-free molds with straws. For more information about BPA read this post.