Zoku 1, 2, 3, 4!

Today's post is so not about Lettering Delights or Make-the-Cut but I had so much fun with what I did I just had to share it with you. 

Hubby has had his eyes on this Zoku Quick Pop Maker since last summer but I had told him that we had no use for it so we never bought it. When my friends kept talking about it, I caved and came home with one last Friday.

I've made homemade ice-cream before so this device doesn't intimidate me. In fact, it looks kinda cute. The concept is simple: Freeze the unit for 24 hours, prepare your ingredients, pour it into the cavities and watch it freeze. The ice pops are supposed to be ready in about 10 mins. And so, I excitedly cleaned the Zoku, put it in the freezer and waited for time to pass.

I thought about all the fantastic ice pops that I could make with this device but a search on the Zoku blog turned up only a handful of recipes. Perhaps I should have gotten the Zoku Quick Pops Recipe Book when I saw it at the store but since I didn't, the internet was the only resource that I could turn to. A few minutes of online searching and I was prepared to just go with the flow and make a super simple ice pop.

 

See this funky looking fruit? It's called Lychee and is very popular amongst Asians. We also like the canned version and use it often in our drinks and desserts.

My smarty-pants hubby and kids thought that it'll be neat to make a lychee popsicle from the canned stuff. I thought "What the heck, why not?!" and so we started playing.

First, I halved a couple of lychees.

Next we took the frozen Zoku Quick Pop Maker out of the freezer.

I used the fruit wand to stick a piece of fruit to the side of each cavity.

Put the popsicle sticks in and pour the juice.

Set the timer for 10 mins and watch the popsicle freeze.

2 mins in and we could already see the big freeze happening.

A couple minutes more and I could see the kids drool.

*Ding!* goes the timer but are the popsicles really ready?

Oh yeah!

Perfect lychee ice pops!

My kids couldn't have whined harder when I didn't give them the ice pops as soon as I got them out of the Zoku. 

"Wait a min, babies! Mommy has to take pictures first." 

"Awwwwww......*whine* *whine* *whine*" x3.

With Hubby's help I actually took that picture in lightning speed. Stereo whining never fails to get us working faster.  

Since the unit is supposed to be able to make three batches of ice pops before it needs to go back into the freezer, I let Hubby have a go at it for the second batch. He made ice pops from his Pineapple Orange juice. LOL!

So we've got one more batch to make this round. What's good as an ice pop?

What's that sitting on the counter?

I spy something pink and yummy.......

I just had to give that a shot!

Tada!

Honestly, I think we took too long making the first and second batches so this third batch took a lot longer than 10 mins to freeze. Besides, it has alcohol content and while it was freezing, it was also bubbling so that the resulting ice pops was pretty slushy-like. Still, I've never enjoyed Mike's Hard Lemonade more than I did that night.

There is a Taiwanese restaurant in town that we go to often. The kids really love their Mango-Strawberry ice dessert. When we had dinner there last weekend, the kids were inspired by their dessert and asked if we could use the Zoku to make some strawberry-mango ice pops.

And we did!

For the strawberry portion, we pureed fresh strawberries with sugar and water, and we did the same for the mango part. The resulting Straw-Go ice pop is so yummy it instantly became our favorite popsicle. 

And so with that, we've reached the end of today's special non-LD or MTC post. We'll go back to regular programming tomorrow.

*slurp*

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This post was linked to Skip To My Lou- Made by You Monday (Aug 2).