I originally posted this at Be Different Act Normal as a guest post a few weeks ago. You can check out my guest post here.
It took me two tries to figure out what combination of juices I needed in order to get the right colours. I don’t mind using food colouring, and I even used a little red food colouring for the first batch. But if I can use all natural juices and skip the artificial colour I’m much happier doing that (yay for discovering carrot juice!). Here’s how the juices looked side by side:
I bought orange carrot juice, pure mango juice, and pineapple juice. You can use any juice combination you like, but if you want the orange section to actually be orange, it’s best to use something that has a bit of carrot juice in it.
The ingredients are easy – vanilla yogurt (just one little container was more than enough), orange carrot juice, and mango juice. I went with the mango juice because it was a bit brighter than the pineapple juice and also a little less transparent. Which is lucky, because it turns out that frozen mango juice is delicious!
I love these little popsicle holders from IKEA! I picked them up this summer for only $2. And they even have the candy corn shape, which makes them perfect for these! Or if you don’t shop at IKEA, here is another option for candy corn shaped popsicle molds.
I added a little bit of milk to the yogurt to make it more pourable – about 2 or 3 tablespoons. It needs to pour into the containers without making a drippy mess. (Or if you want you can use my mom’s technique of using a turkey baster like she did for my rainbow jello recipe).
It’s hard to see how full the container is, so I found it easiest to hold it up to the light while I was pouring:
I put them into the freezer for 1 hour to set and then I added the layer of carrot juice.
Here it is held up to the light again. You can already see the fun contrast of the layers:
I put the containers back into the freezer for 1 hour and 20 minutes to set. It took me two tries to get the timing right. My first attempt at making these, I only froze this layer for 1 hour. When I put the stick in, the layers mixed together. The middle layer has to be hard to the touch, but not so hard that you can’t get the stick in. It’s a tricky balance.
I took them out of the freezer, added the mango juice, crossed my fingers and pushed the stick through. They felt much more solid, and I was a little worried the stick wasn’t going to go through, but they worked out wonderfully!
Apparently, frozen vanilla yogurt is delicious too! And I bet that vanilla yogurt mixed with mango juice would be even better! I haven’t experimented much with these popsicle molds yet, but the mango juice and vanilla yogurt combo is definitely on my to-do list!
Freezing time: 8 hours Number of servings: 6
These were such a fun fall treat for my girls. We pretty much never buy popsicles at the grocery store, so the concept was pretty special for them. And now that we’ve mastered the art of making layered popsicles, there’s a whole new range of possibilities!
