fruit or peanut butter yogurt pops

Well, what can I say about these? They're delicious. They're cold. Some of them contain peanut butter. What more do you really need?

These delicious creamy peanut butter popsicles are my absolute favourite thing right now. I'm not usually so gaga for peanut butter, but there's just something about it that makes me really happy. 

Basically, the peanut butter popsicle is like ice cream on a stick. I keep imagining I'm going to put that mixture through my ice cream maker one of these days. With bits of whole peanuts and chocolate chips swirled in. 

Oh chocolate goes very well with these! Unfortunately, I did not google how to dip ice cream into melted chocolate, so my first batch of chocolate covered peanut butter pops was an absolute disaster. Not a gross disaster, just a very melty and unsuccessful disaster. Future self, take note: learn how to dip cool things in chocolate. It's important information for life.

These are blueberry fig yogurt popsicles. Why aren't there any figs in the picture telling your eyes that? Well, damn the figs to hell, I say. I bought a whole flat of them with the specific idea of turning them into delicious fig and honey yogurt pops only to find the figs extremely under-ripe. So I left them to ripen. Except instead of ripening they started rotting and continued to stay unripe, so I could only save a few to blend into my popsicle mix. I added the blueberries cuz I was royally pissed off at that point thought they'd blend well with the figs. They created a great colour and a better taste than the under-ripe/rotten figs would have on their own.

The fruit-based popsicles have a stronger tangy yogurt flavour than the other, so I prefer the peanut butter flavour (well, duh). But both are refreshing and delicious in their own ways so pick your poison.

adapted from Serious Eats

makes approximately 10 pops

2 cups plain yogurt (I used Astro's Balkan style)

1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla

Either in a blender or with an immersion blender (my choice: less clean-up), blend the yogurt, honey and vanilla together until smooth. Feel free to add more honey or more vanilla to taste. This is what I used for the base of each popsicle.

If you want all peanut butter pops, add 1 cup smooth peanut butter (I used Kraft's Lite version) to the yogurt mixture. Add the peanut butter a few tablespoons at a time and blend after each addition. You want to make sure the peanut butter is thoroughly combined with the yogurt and there are no big globs floating around in there. Again, feel free to add more or less peanut butter to your little heart's content. Pour into your popsicle mould of choice and freeze until set.

If you'd like a fruit popsicle, blend about a cup of whatever fruit you have on hand into the yogurt base. I added about three figs (more or less, I was really scraping here) and a couple handfuls of fresh blueberries. Strawberries or bananas would be really delicious, too. Although I haven't tried it, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest jam as well. Use the same method for adding it into the yogurt mixture as the peanut butter, and I betcha it'll turn out pretty darn swell.

{note} For some reason, the second time I made the peanut butter pops, I had one hell of a time getting them out of the mould (hence their melty appearance). They may or may not be difficult for you as well. Fair warning.

{noted} If you want some of each, I split the yogurt mixture in half in order to get half peanut butter and half berry. Just make sure to halve both the peanut butter and fruit amounts for each half of the yogurt.