That’s right, a dollar store recipe! I have dubbed my kitchen the unofficial Dollar Tree test kitchen and I’ve started experimenting with recipes using strictly ingredients that I’ve bought from their food section. Here is the first of many recipes to come: tropical fruit popsicles! These sweet, frosty treats are great for a hot day. (And it’s been very hot around here lately!) I made pineapple papaya guava popsicles, with real fruit and juice, for $1.50 worth of dollar store ingredients. Sound too good to be true? Here’s how I did it – and they taste as good as they sound!
Project estimate:
- Dried pineapple and papaya chunks, $1
- Guava nectar, $0.50
- Water, on hand
- Blender, on hand
- Sieve, on hand or $1
- Popsicle mold, on hand or $1
Total: $1.50 and up
The first step is to rehydrate the fruit chunks. Put the fruit in a bowl or jar and pour the can on nectar over it. Cover and place in the refrigerator to soak for at least 24 hours. (Tip: Chopping the fruit chunks into smaller bits will reduce the amount of time they need to soak. But I just threw mine in whole.)
Dump the fruit and nectar into the blender and add 1 cup water; blend until smooth. Depending on your blender this might take a while; even after a good soaking, the fruit chunks might be a little bit difficult to blend.
When mine was to the point of mostly blended I was having a problem getting the last pieces to break down, so I put the blender canister into the fridge for about an hour so the freshly-chopped bits could soak a wee bit more. When it’s all blended up, it turns a wonderfully sunny shade of orange!
To get rid of any stubborn remaining chunks and even out the consistency of the mixture, force it through a sieve. Discard any solids left at the end. (Most of the pulpy solids will go through the sieve if you keep working it.)
Pour the mixture into popsicle molds. (If you use the same molds that I have, you will have enough liquid to make about 14 popsicles.) Stick ’em in the freezer and wait a while.
When they’re completely frozen, remove them from the molds by loosening them with a dip in warm water. For the best results, carefully pull each popsicle out by the base of the handle, not by the stick.
Now close your eyes, take a lick, and pretend you’re lounging on a tropical beach somewhere!
4 Comments
Sherry
They sound yummy, but I’m wondering about calories, as I do for everything these days! (That dehydrated fruit is pretty sugary, isn’t it??)
erin
I cheated and bought the cranberry cocktail juice, had some cranberries already so just put some in the molds as they started to get frozen and pushed them down with a bamboo skewer.
Danielle
I plugged the ingredients into the “My Fitness Pal” app an it came up with a total of 40 calories each (if you make 14 popsicles) and 8.1 grams of sugar. Compared to the big box of popsicle sticks from the grocery store at 25 cal and 5 g sugar, yes these do have a higher content of both. (But also a higher content of flavor!)
If you added more water to them, the “bad” numbers would go down (since you’d be making more than 14) but the flavor would also become diluted.