Would you like a deliciously refreshing ice lolly?  These will cool you down while delighting you with their vibrant colours and flavours.  Plus they’re pretty healthy with superfood probiotic kefir reportedly aiding your digestion and fruit contributing to your five a day!  The apricot purée has a wonderful intense flavour; my recent experiment of adding bitter orange marmalade with 61% fruit content is optional but it’s a lovely surprise and makes these lollies breakfasty and yummy.  A recipe isn’t essential as you just alternate spooning various ingredients in the lolly mould:  kefir, pieces of apricot, maybe some apricot purée or marmalade, kefir… repeat.  But it could be nice inspiration and I wanted to share how lovely kefir is in an ice lolly, as we recently discovered during a Sourdough school course. More about kefir later.  And even if the heatwave’s over it’s still hot enough for an ice lolly especially here in Barcelona.  When my brother, sister-in-law and niece visited my non-air conditioned flat for several days last week these helped cool us down a bit.  They’re so refreshingly yummy that some of us (not going to name anyone) managed to have up to three for breakfast then tea then dinner!  Tee hee. They’re also a great way to quickly use up kefir or fruit about to go off or cans of fruit and jam hanging around with nothing better to do!  These healthier popsicles are just slightly sweetened with pure maple syrup and if using canned fruit make sure it’s unsweetened or in very light syrup. Apricot and kefir lollies can be also be vegan using coconut milk or water kefir and different fruit can be used.  My brother particularly enjoyed discovering blueberries in his kefir lolly.  So feel free to go wild and creative with your own lollies then thoroughly enjoy eating them! 🙂

Want to vote?

No-one else has tried my lollies with marmalade but I love them and a special lolly tester will be arriving this Saturday.  It’s not that different from having a yoghurt pot with jam and fruit swirled in it.  But there’s a survey on my Instagram account in the Story section asking people ‘Would you like marmalade in your ice lolly?’ (popsicle) and so far it’s 5 votes against and 4 votes for!!!  Eeek…  Do visit if you’d like to vote here – I think it’s open until 13:00 Friday 24th.  Hey or even better make some to try for yourself! 🙂

Variations

Below are various versions of this lolly.  The two-tone ones have pieces of apricot plus kefir and apricot purée both sweetened with maple syrup.  The pink lolly has blended raspberry and kefir.  Spot the blueberries and raspberry pieces… !

The pink part with blueberries was frozen a few hours before topping with the kefir and apricot purée.

RECIPE

These lollies are invented based on the idea that you can use fruit purées, pieces of fruit, kefir and even marmalade in a lolly and that any liquid should be sweetened with a little maple syrup so it doesn’t become a solid block of ice (sugars soften lollies).  From Donna Hay’s popsicle recipes I saw it was possible to achieve a swirly effect or interesting pattern by dropping in spoons of kefir into the lolly mould (she uses greek yoghurt) alternating with spoons of chopped fruit then fruit purée.  Don’t stir, just drop things in.

This was my breakfast today by the way… 🙂

Equipment

A couple of popsicle mould sets is handy.  My very cheap IKEA set works really well and a recently-aquired posher Zoku ZK114 set is great because the lollies can be stored hermetically sealed in their original mould, which is transparent so you can check what’s happening as you layer then see which lolly you’re selecting to eat!  Not getting sponsored to say these things by the way.

I initially thought of finding more pretty wooden sticks but the washable plastic sticks that come with lolly-making sets are very practical and reusable.  If you want to use wooden sticks wait a few hours until the lollies partially set in the freezer then insert the sticks.

Apricot and kefir ice lollies

Makes about 8 big lollies (or 5 big lollies and 4 little ones), depending on the size of your lolly moulds.

• 400-450g/ml milk kefir (water or coconut kefir could be nice too – will try them one day)
• 300g/10.6oz apricots, cut or slice into small-medium pieces (fresh or canned, unsweetened)
• 40 – 80g/2 – 4 tablespoons pure maple syrup (or honey), to taste (remember it’ll taste less sweet when frozen)
• 10 or more tablespoons sweetened apricot purée (with maple syrup, to taste) or 8 – 10 teaspoons marmalade or jam with high fruit content (61% or more) – quantities to taste

Note:  there’s more of a swirl effect when using fruit purée (left photo) but the marmalade has a lovely surprise factor (right photo).  

Options:  drop in slices of strawberries, raspberries, bananas or whole blueberries.  Blend other fruit with kefir or almond milk to make another layer.  Use sweeteners like honey or unrefined sugar and greek yoghurt, coconut milk kefir or skyr!

Eating and storing

Eat before it melts and over a plate if you’re on a pretty sofa.  Store in the freezer up to a week and probably a month or so but it’s always better to eat them as early as possible.

Kefir

For people who are a bit new to kefir like me, it’s an ancient fermented milk beverage that’s trending right now.  Because it’s fermented it’s better tolerated by those who don’t usually react well to lactose and it’s meant to provide lots of healthy bacteria to promote better digestion.  It also has many uses and I’ve just discovered it can replace buttermilk in cakes so must try that next.  You probably know my thing is cakes and I’m not a kefir expert so there are a couple of links below if you’d like to find out more…

As with most new popular superfoods there are super enthusiastic articles like this very readable Why kefir is not the new kale (it’s better!) then there are positive but more cautious articles that point out lack of solid evidence for certain health claims, like the BBC goodfood’s Health benefits of Kefir here.  For vegans there’s 6 reasons to drink kefir (hey it can be vegan too!).  Generally everyone seems to agree kefir has very impressive health benefits.  Yay!  So have it in lolly form for a change… !

Would you like a breakfast apricot and kefir popsicle?  A lovely way to start the day but great to have any time really…

Farewell again dear reader!  May you have a very chilled cool week and weekend ahead with some happy baking, no-baking and eating! 🙂  Lili x