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Cool Down: Make Your Own Frozen Treats This Summer

As the weather heats up, we’ll be looking for ways to cool down this summer. Even if you don’t have an ice-cream maker at home, there are plenty of ways to make your own frozen treats. Here are a few of our favorites, which can be made in blenders, food processors, or with even more basic kitchen tools. If you need a quick review of kitchen tools used, read How to Use a Melon Baller or watch our How to Use a Blender video. 

One-Ingredient Ice Cream
Keep it simple with One-Ingredient Banana Ice Cream. (We’ll let you guess the ingredient.) Making this recipe is like doing a magic trick: whip up plain frozen bananas in your blender and end up with the creamiest, dreamiest ice cream you ever tasted. (And it takes just 10 minutes of hands-on time!) The banana “ice cream” tastes great on its own, but you can also top it with peanut butter, cocoa powder, vanilla, or cinnamon for a fancier dessert.

Love strawberries or pineapple, too? Make Two-Fruit Ice Cream for even more flavor!

Frozen Yogurt or Sherbet
For an option that’s ice cream adjacent and made with real fruit, make Pineapple Frozen Yogurt, Green Apple Fro-Yo, or Cherry “Sherbet” in your food processor or blender. All of them use yogurt as the base. Take advantage of cherry season by using fresh cherries, pretend you’re on a tropical vacation with pineapple flavors, or make fro-yo into the fall with fresh apples. Not quite sure what sherbet is? It’s a sorbet, which is also a frozen-fruit based dessert, but made with dairy.

Popsicles
If you prefer popsicles instead, try these recipes. We know eating food on a stick is always more fun, so we love to make and freeze these all summer long. Frozen Fruit-Salad Pops can be made with almost any kind of fruit you have in the kitchen. The sunset-colored Strawberry-Orange Popsicles require just orange juice and strawberries and taste as good as they look. Kiwisicles are simply frozen kiwis on a stick but they make a great group snack. Plus, you can make “-sicles” with other fruit like melon balls, strawberries, and pineapple chunks. Or for an extra large “popsicle,” put frozen watermelon wedges on a stick to make these Frozen Watermelon ‘Popsicles.’ 

Here’s a challenge: Do an experiment and create your own popsicle flavor and recipe. Email us at info@chopchopfamily.org and let us know what you made. 

Slush
Skip the slushie and make your own Grapefruit Slush at home. If you don’t love grapefruit, swap the juice out for apple or orange. Another word for this recipe is “granita” which is an Italian dessert. The word “granita” shares the same root as “granular” because the frozen dessert has a grainy texture.

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