Peach Yogurt-sicles

I just discovered that Outshine frozen fruit bars are part of the Nestle conglomeration. As the Nestle CEO believes that clean water is not a human right, I have been trying to eliminate all Nestle products from my pantry. It was difficult to give up Stouffer's frozen lasagna; now I have to give up these sweet treats. (I'm not sure what I need to do to give up Bunch o' Crunch, but that's a story for another time.) This, then, is my foray into making my own frozen fruit on a stick.

The first thing to do, of course, is find a recipe. I landed on the one on the American Heart Association's (AHA) website. Unlike the Outshine, this recipe contains yogurt, so I expect it to be kind of like peaches and cream.

The pictures above the intro include a 4x6 recipe card you can print at home. I usually use 4x6 photo paper for my kitchen recipe file. Below is a link to the AHA's recipe PDF.

For tools, you will need:

1. A blender, food processor, or bowl with an immersion blender. I'm using my Vitamix 5400.
2. If you are using something other than a blender, you should also have something with a pour spout.
3. A spatula, to help with the scraping down the sides of things.
4. A kitchen scale that displays ounces. Mine is a Taylor tempered-glass scale with 11-lb. capacity.
5. A popsicle mold. Mine came without the sticks, so I also needed . . .
6. Popsicle sticks.
7. Some sort of freezer bags to put the popsicles in once they are frozen. This is to keep them fresh.
8. A cutting board and sharp knife to dice up some of the peach slices.
9. Since there are people out there who will complain if I don't include this, you also need a freezer.
10. A colander is optional.

As for ingredients, the three things you need are:

1. 1-pound bag of frozen peach slices
2. 8 ounces (by weight) of plain yogurt
3. 1 tablespoon of honey

Allow the peaches to thaw completely. You can do this in the bag if you like, but I chose to use a colander. Let the peaches thaw completely before moving to the next step.

Put your choice of liquefying container (blender bottle, processor container, bowl with spout) on the scale and press "Tare." This zeros out the scale. Now, put in 10 ounces of the thawed peaches. Dice up the remaining peach slices. Make them small enough to be able to fit easily in the popsicle mold. Set these aside for later.

Tare the scale again. Add 8 ounces of yogurt to the liquefying container. Then add the tablespoon of honey.

Run your device until the mixture is puréed. For the blender, this should be about 1 minute.

If your liquefying container does not have a pour spout, this is the time to transfer it. Add the chopped peach slices to the pouring container and stir them around. Pour the purée into the molds, filling each section almost to the top. Use the spatula to make sure each section gets a good number of the peach chunks. You don't want too many of them going into the last few pours.

The original recipe filled just short of 8 sections of my mold. The recipe may need adjustment for your mold size and number. I will discuss recipe conversion in the conclusion.

Put on the mold cover and/or insert the sticks.

Place the filled mold on a level, flat surface in the freezer. Allow it to freeze before proceeding to the next step.

Remove the frozen treats from the mold. Place each one in an individual freezer-safe bag. I couldn't find freezer bags small enough for a popsicle. So, I bought some cellophane popsicle bags and put them all into a gallon-size freezer Ziploc.

The recipe as it appears on the AHA website says it makes 3 cups. That is enough to fill 8 of the sections in my mold. Your mold may vary. In order to get the correct recipe sizing for your mold, you need to know how many ounces each section in your mold holds. Multiply that by the number of sections, and that gives you your batch size. For example, if each section is 2 ounces and there are 4 sections, that means you need 8 ounces, or 1 cup. Dividing the 1 cup by this recipe's 3 cups means you need to reduce each ingredient to one-third. So, 16 ounces becomes 5⅓ ounces of peach slices, 8 ounces becomes 2⅔ ounces of yogurt, and a third of a tablespoon is a teaspoon of honey. I am happy to help anyone with the math; just leave a comment.

Was it financially worth it? The cost of the original item is $4.99 for 6 popsicles with a volume of 15 fluid ounces, just short of 2 full cups. This recipe makes 8 popsicles with a volume of ≈24 fluid ounces. My ingredient costs were:

1. $3.99 for the peach slices
2. $1.06 for 8 ounces of yogurt
3. 20¢ for 1 tablespoon of the cheapest available honey
4. 10¢ for 10 popsicle sticks

The total, then, is $5.35 for 8 popsicles. That comes to 66.9¢ each. The Outshine are $4.99 for 6, which is 83.2¢ each. Per popsicle, the home-made win, unless the Outshine are on sale for $4 a box. The difference in volume is also minimal, with 24 fl. oz. on the home-made and 15 fl. oz. for the store-bought. That makes them 22.3¢ and 33.3¢ per fluid ounce respectively, or a necessary sale price of $3.34 per store-bought box.

So, are they worth the savings? That depends. The home-made pops are denser than the store-bought. The Outshine lost structural integrity quicker than the recipe results, meaning it fell off the stick sooner. In addition, the creaminess I thought would be there with the addition of the yogurt is not really present. The chunks of peach, though, did give this a uniqueness; and the pops tasted like fresh peaches, even though frozen are used for the recipe.

In conclusion, if you want to have more control over the ingredients in your food and who gets your money, then this is definitely worth a try. The prep time (about 5 minutes) and skills required to make are negligible. So, yes, I will be making this again; but maybe I'll purée 2 more ounces of the peaches so I don't have so many chunks to worry about.