When mobile phones were becoming popular, a bit over 10 years ago, I jumped right on the bandwagon and got a Nokia phone. It was very basic, no color screen or anything, couldnt text or take pictures. But I did have a changeable faceplate kind of thing. I had two different colors for it metallic silver and matte purple. The purple one was my favorite. I only had it for a year or so. Then I didnt have a mobile phone until one year ago! Yes, thats right, I survived all that time without a mobile phone. People were carrying around fancy iPhones all around me, but I was stuck with a pen and paper (if I was even lucky enough to have those in my bag!) and if I wanted to tell someone something, it had to wait until I saw them in person! What a terrible way to survive! Just kidding, really, it wasnt terrible. I kind of took pride in the fact that I could still survive using traditional methods of communication.
But it was getting a bit out of control. These days, everyone who is anyone has a smartphone. When I got my first mobile phone in 10 years, about this time one year ago, it was yet another basic phone. It had a color screen, but no camera. I could text, but it took almost 10 minutes to punch out a single sentence using the keypad. My husband, on the other hand, was given an iPhone by his boss at work! Imagine how jealous I was when he whipped his iPhone out of his pocket and started checking his email or searching on the internet for something he was curious about! I was just beside myself with jealousy. See, I basically live through the internet; I check my email (and Facebook and Twitter) hundreds of times per day at our desktop computer. But I am just overwhelmed and fascinated at the thought of checking my email or tweeting in the car, or the train, at a restaurant, on the sofa or in bed in the middle of the night! Wow, how awesome!
Recently, a friend of mine Ive known for years offered to give me her iPhone 3GS as she, of course, had a shiny new iPhone 4. I took her up on that offer and received my very first smartphone yesterday in the mail. My husbands sorting out phone plans for it. Im pretty much clueless when it comes to mobile phone plans because I havent had enough of them to understand what the plans even mean (poor me!). Im super, super excited to finally move up in the world; maybe now I wont feel so out of place. Ill finally be able to tweet from anywhere I like, and take pictures of meaningless things with Instagram, just like everyone else.
Speaking of Instagram, Ive had a crush on this for ages. Since I didnt have my own smartphone to use Instagram with, I download Pixlr-o-Matic and started editing my photos in an Instagram-like fashion. Which brings me up to the real topic of this post Zoku recipes! The pictures I took of these popsicles have been edited with Pixlr-o-Matic, so they dont have the appearance of my usual photos. The original photos werent that great anyway, as I took them on gray, rainy days or later in the afternoon, when the natural lighting wasnt so bright. They actually look better edited with Pixlr-o-Matic!
So lets begin. This first recipe is from the Zoku Quick Pops Recipe Book, and therefore I wont publish the recipe to avoid copyright issues! If you do have a Zoku and dont have the recipe book, I highly recommend purchasing the book. The recipes are really top-notch.
These are fudge and banana popsicles with peanut butter quick shell. These are amazing! The chocolate part is super fudgey-ish and even though the bananas are sliced so thinly, the banana flavor is strong. I liked the peanut butter quick shell, but next time I probably wouldnt add it to these pops. They tasted wonderful without the peanut butter. Side note on these, I used a 70% Lindt chocolate bar for these.
The next recipe is adapted from a recipe Ive already posted about Vietnamese coffee popsicles. They were just super strong coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk (and a little bit of cocoa powder, but I omitted that for these popsicles pictured below). Those were really good. But, what if I were to use dulce de leche instead of sweetened condensed milk? What would that taste like?
Well, it would taste pretty darn good! Unfortunately, most of this was actually drank (by myself) by the time I could freeze it all in the Zoku! Wow, these were just spectacular. I highly recommend these for hot days in summertime, when you want a coffee but prefer something colder. Theyll cool you down and give you that coffee hit, all at the same time! To make these popsicles, read the recipe at the bottom of this post.
Lastly comes the most outrageous popsicles caramel popcorn! Can you make popsicles out of popcorn? Yes, you can. This may not be everyones cup of tea, so to speak, but if you love caramel popcorn, this ones for you.
Thats my stripey daughter holding this dulce de leche-striped popcorm popsicle! The recipe comes from the Zoku blog. To sum up this recipe, you heat milk up on the stove with buttered popcorn and strain out the popcorn when the mixture is cool. After being frozen, drizzle the popsicles with dulce de leche, and, if desired, stick on some popcorn pieces.
The verdict on these was varied: I thought they were really good; my daughter only liked licking off the dulce de leche; my oldest son mostly hated the entire thing, especially the dulce de leche; when I asked my husband if he wanted a popcorn popsicle, his exact words were, Oh, yuck!; I didnt even offer my 2-year-old one!
Find the recipe for caramel popcorn popsicles on the Zoku blog.
I hope you like my faux Instragram photos (and popsicles!). I promise I wont start posting Instagram photos here though, as I do enjoy clear, sharp photos of food over Instagram ones. But if you are on Webstagram, I will start posting there all the time as soon as Im able to (and figure out how to)!
Adapted from A Cozy Kitchen, who adapted it from David Lebovitz
Makes 5 Zoku popsicles (if you dont drink it all first!)
Ingredients
1 cup extra strong coffee or espresso, hot, but not boiling
1/3 cup dulce de leche
Method
Scoop the dulce de leche into the coffee and stir until thoroughly combined and all the dulce de leche is melted. Taste the mixture to make sure it is to your liking. Place in the refrigerator to cool completely.
Pour into molds, as per the instructions for the Zoku, and wait up to 10 minutes to freeze (or just simply pour into plain old popsicle molds and freeze overnight).
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