Feeling hot hot hot! Are you in Kent this week? Are you having a heat wave too? If you’re as bad at coping with the heat as I am then the next week is going to be very interesting! Rest assured, I’ll be sitting in the shade and eating lots of cooling food. I have some favourite recipes to share with you for some home-made cool treats for your children.
Frozen banana and peanut butter ice-cream
This is one of my absolute favourite recipes. Every time I have some spare ripe bananas around, I chop them up and put them in the freezer, which gives me a great stash for whenever I need them. Retrieve your frozen bananas from the freezer, add half a tablespoon of peanut butter for every banana and put in a blender. Whizz until smooth and enjoy. So easy and such a tasty treat.
If you don’t like peanut butter you can add nutella, or chocolate spread. You could also add cinnamon, cardamon, vanilla extract or honey. Or you could enjoy it on its own.
Fruit juice ice lollies
Another really simple recipe with only one ingredient this time. I often make ice lollies using fruit juice, especially if I have some hanging around at the back of the fridge that everyone’s ignoring!
All you really need to make this work is a mould to pour them in and something to stick in them. You may well already have ice pop moulds but if you haven’t check out my tips at the end of the blog for alternatives.
Milkshake ice pops
Sticking with simple ingredients, these milky ice lollies are made with a ripe banana, a can of light condensed milk and 10 strawberries. Blend the condensed milk and chopped up banana until smooth and then add the strawberries. You could replace the strawberries with other berries, including raspberries or blueberries – or use nutella!
Frozen Mango yoghurt ice-cream
Oh my word, this one is delicious! It may have the most ingredients but it’s so worth it! I bought frozen mango cubes for this but you could buy a fresh mango.
Ingredients
1 fresh mango or 2 cups of frozen mango cubes
1 cup full fat Greek yoghurt
1 teapsoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Blend the mango until smooth then add the yoghurt, sweetener and vanilla extract and blend again again until smooth and fluffy looking. Freeze for 2 hours and enjoy!
Other cool fruit treats
So what other simple cool treats can you make? As well as banana and mangoes, grapes are delicious when they’re frozen. You can eat them straight from the fridge (tasty with cheese at the end of a meal) or pop them in a drink as fruity ice cubes. As with unfrozen grapes, they can be a choking hazard to younger children so take care.
Tips for making for cool treats
You may well already have ice pop moulds but if you haven’t you can recycle yoghurt pots, paper cups or an ice cube tray. You can improvise lolly sticks using plastic spoons, cocktail sticks (for smaller lollies) or straws. The possibilities are endless!
To release an ice lolly from a mould, turn it upside down and run them under warm water.
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