Recipe: Traffic Light Ice Lollies

As the weather has been so nice, today I'm straying away from lunchboxes to share a little project that I made with Small Child recently - traffic light ice lollies.  These ice lollies are made purely from fruit and a little fruit juice, with no added sugar, so definitely count towards your 5 a day!  I was inspired to make them after seeing fruity ice lollies all over Pinterest, and a quick trip to the supermarket to find multi-coloured fruit gave me the inspiration I needed to make them in traffic light colours. The same principle could be used for any combination of fruit, so I expect we'll be experimenting a bit more with this recipe over the summer.

Ingredients

• 1 Punnet of Strawberries
• 1 Ripe Mango
• 4 Kiwi Fruits
• Orange Juice
• Apple Juice

Method

Prepare the fruit; wash, hull and roughly chop the strawberries, peel, stone and chop the mango, peel and roughly chop the kiwi fruits. Whiz each fruit separately in a blender, adding a little fruit juice to aid the blending.  I added apple juice to the strawberries and kiwis, and orange juice to the mango.  If wanted, add a little sugar or honey to sweeten the fruit; I didn't add any but having tasted the finished lollies I would probably add a little sugar to the kiwi mixture if I was making them again.  If wanted, you could also strain the fruit mixtures at this point to remove any seeds.  We weren't too worried about the seeds, so didn't bother.

Spoon the first layer of fruit into your lolly moulds, so that it fills about ⅓ of each mould.  If you don't have lolly moulds, you could try using disposable cups or washed out yoghurt pots with lolly sticks instead.  Freeze for an hour or two until starting to harden, then add the next layer.  Repeat until all 3 layers are in the moulds.  Add the lolly sticks after the last layer and freeze overnight or until the lollies are completely frozen through. Note: I covered the bowls of fruit that were awaiting freezing between layers and popped them into the fridge to keep them fresh.Small Child enjoyed getting stuck into this project, hulling the strawberries for me, and helping to fill the lolly moulds with the fruit mixtures.  As I've mentioned in a previous post, I allow him to use a sharp paring knife under close supervision as I believe he is mature enough to do so and he knows the rules.  Each child is different though, so use your discretion when deciding whether your child is ready to wield a sharp knife or not!

I thought that the finished lollies looked and tasted great, and I'm glad I now have a stash of healthy fruit lollies to dish out when the sun is shining, rather than the very 'artificial' ice lollies that I was originally eyeing up in the supermarket.

I overestimated the amount of fruit needed (we made 24 lollies, but our lolly moulds are quite small), so I froze what was left into cubes to throw into future fruit smoothies (you can find my smoothie recipes here).

This was a fun project, I'm looking forward to making more fruity lollies when our current supply runs out.  What fruit would you use to make ice lollies from?

Grace