Nik Of All Trades: Pops!

Summer is coming, and our little ones are growing up so quickly. Being a healthy mom I'm always on the lookout for interesting ideas to let Demi have her treats, but keep the experience as healthy as possible. I came across a great book called "Pops!" by Krystina Castella. The book has recipes for young and old. K and I have been indulging in some really great cheesecake pops... not that I need any more help with my waist line.

The book contains some really great recipes, and provides a great base for any creative health conscious mom. One of Demi's favorite treats so far is a one of my own recipes taken from the Peanut butter and Jelly recipe from the book.... ok, apparently I wasn't reading carefully because I just noticed that one of her substitutions is banana! (though she does it differently than me.)

Of course every new hobby requires my prerequisite trip to my favorite store to stock up on supplies. The Dollar Store! As the book will tell you anything can be used as a popsicle mold. I purchased some actual popsicle containers, but ended up having to drill holes in the plastic sticks because they were just slipping right out minus the popsicle!

By popular demand I'm going to share my peanut butter and banana pop recipe, and the recipe for the cheesecake pops.

Peanut Butter Banana Pops
1/2 peanut butter
1/2 yogurt
1/2 milk2tbs honey
Mix in a blender
1/2 - 1 banana cut into small cubes. Fill your pop molds with the peanut butter mixture. Place in the freezer for 1 hr.
Remove the pops from the freezer and insert your banana pieces. The peanut butter mixture should be thick enough to suspend the banana throughout the pop. Freeze overnight (or a good 6 hours)You can make this a PB & J pop by using fruit juice (we used Bolthouse 50/50 veggie berry flavor). Fill 1/2 of the pop mold with fruit juice, let freeze for 1-2 hrs. Fill the remaining space with your PB mixture.

Cheesecake pops
(these work best in a silicon mold or in a paper cup so you can cut it off)

1 cup fruit reduction (we used strawberry)8oz cream cheese room temperature
1cup heavy cream (I used 2%)
1/2 sugar
vanilla
Crust
10 graham crackers6tbs sugar4 tbs unsalted butter melted

In your cup evenly distribute the fruit reduction (makes 8 6oz pops). Freeze for 2 hours.
Mix cream cheese, cream, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Remove the cups and evenly distribute cream cheese mixture. Insert sticks. Freeze for 3 hours. Mix crust ingredients. If the mixture is not sticking together easily you may want to ad some water 1 tbs at a time. Press the crust into the pop molds. Freeze for at least 4 hours.Of course you can ad fruit to the cheesecake mixture as well, or use chocolate cookie crumbs.

I used cardboard with a slit cut into it as a brace to hold the popsicle sticks in place.

*Disclaimer: Children should always be supervised when eating popsicles as they can be a chocking hazard, and the sticks can be dangerous if they are running with them in their mouth.*

Sesame Street silicone ice cube trays make excellent Elmo pops!