What a fun way to enjoy yogurt and berries! This chilly sugar-free dessert pleases both kids and adults. I eat these ice pops for breakfast too, they are so good. A perfect way to start a day, especially now during hot summer.
For vegans and for those who don’t use dairy (paleo, for example), I created a vegan version. This modification and some other ideas for variations you find from the end of the post, like usual.
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| Nutrition information | Protein | Fat | Net carbs | kcal |
| In total: | 8.0 g | 38.1 g | 24.2 g | 471 kcal |
| Per ice pop if 6 ice pops in total: | 1.3 g | 6.4 g | 4.0 g | 78 kcal |
Tips for making the ice pops
Can it get any easier? Just blend everything until smooth and pour into ice pop molds. The colder the freezer temperature the better the texture of the ice pops. The ice crystals are smaller in lower temperatures, that’s why.
I don’t know how really effective blender works, but my immersion blender left tiny pieces of blueberries to the mixture. I didn’t mind those, but if you would like to have completely smooth texture, just pour the mixture through a sieve before filling the ice pop molds with it.
The yield is quite small, 6 pieces of approximately 2 fl oz (60 ml) ice pops. I used Ikea ice pop molds. If you would like to make more, or bigger ice pops, just multiply the amounts of ingredients.
My experiments with these ice pops
It was finally time to empty my freezer from all those berries I had stored there over the winter. Strawberries I had used for milkshakes and strawberry quark, raspberries I used for jam, and now there were plenty of blueberries left. I was baking batches of blueberry muffins, but the freezer didn’t get empty.
Because of the hot weather preparing something cold from the blueberries was obvious. Ice pops would be cold and fun. In my eyes I saw beautiful, white ice pops with decorative swirls of puréed blueberry. Those I wanted to make!
In my first experiment I combined 1 1/4 cup (300 ml) organic coconut milk with 25 drops vanilla stevia and a pinch of xanthan. In another bowl I puréed 2 oz (60 g) blueberries and 10 drops vanilla stevia. I poured the coconut milk mixture into ice pop molds and topped it with the blueberry mixture. I made some swirls with fork and put the molds into freezer.
The result was somewhat disappointing. No nice swirls, just fuzzy patterns of blueberry and white coconut milk here and there. The taste wasn’t very palatable either. The coconut milk tasted too interesting, somehow too “thin”, and it was truly quite tasteless despite vanilla stevia. It definitely needed some contrast. Blueberry didn’t taste very much either. Well, definitely some space for improvement.
I was thinking of frozen yogurt. Combining yogurt and blueberries and freezing the mixture as ice pops sounded like a good idea. Yogurt might give that well-needed contrast to the coconut milk. Because blueberry didn’t taste enough, I decided to increase the amount of blueberries to 3 oz (85 g). In addition to blueberries, I added 1 cup (240 ml) organic full-fat Turkish yogurt, 1/4 cup (60 ml) coconut milk and 30 drops vanilla stevia. I blended everything until smooth, and poured the mixture into ice pop molds and put them into freezer.
After a few hours it was time to taste the experiment. Now there was some contrast! Actually too much. The yogurt was overpowering and giving nasty, sour taste. Maybe reducing the amount of yogurt and adding some more coconut milk would do the trick? The amount of blueberries was now just right, no need to adjust it. The sweetness was also perfect.
In my next experiment I blended 3/4 cup (180 ml) organic full-fat Turkish yogurt, 1/2 cup (120 ml) organic coconut milk and 30 drops vanilla stevia. I also sprinkled 1 pinch xanthan on top of the mixture while blending. I wanted to see whether xanthan improves the texture.
Xanthan didn’t do anything (maybe 1 pinch was too little anyway?), but the flavor was now perfect to my taste! I could clearly taste the yogurt, but it wasn’t too strong. Coconut milk made the flavors smoother, but I couldn’t taste anymore that characteristic coconut milk flavor, which was a good thing.
Even I was completely was happy with my experiment, I still wanted to try out a vegan version. I left out the yogurt, increased the amount of coconut milk and added 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice to give some sour flavor now when the yogurt was omitted. I added 5 more drops vanilla stevia, the mixture simply needed some more sweetness.
The result was surprisingly good. I don’t know if you really can call those vegan “yogurt” ice pops, but at least I was happy with them, so was my son.
Tips for variation
Here is the recipe for those vegan “yogurt” ice pops, my last experiment about which I just told:
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I got a wild idea to add melted dark chocolate and drizzle it to the mixture while blending it, in a similar way than in my Sugar-Free Stracciatella Yogurt. I didn’t try this out, but I’ll definitely do that next. Another way to get some chocolatey flavor to these ice pops is to add dark cocoa powder. However, I wouldn’t add too much, maybe just 1 tablespoon at maximum.
Instead of vanilla stevia I would also like to try some other flavors, like berry or strawberry. Chocolate raspberry might give also an interesting flavor, I hope not too interesting!
I’ve done also some experiments with blueberry jam. The taste is perfect but the texture needs improving. If I manage to perfect the recipe, I’ll publish it next week. UPDATE: Got the texture perfect as well, you can find the post here with an awesomely delicious recipe for blueberry jam filled low-carb muffins!
Could you use coconut milk kefir to make the vegan bars instead of yogurt? I’ve just started making kefir and want to experiment with it. I’m not much of a cook though.
Hi, it should work. Did you scroll down the page? There is a recipe for a vegan version of the ice pops. It uses coconut milk and lemon juice (the juice is there for acidity, but I guess you don’t need it if you use coconut milk kefir).
Just made these today, they are freezing now. I had extra berry/yogurt puree, so we drank it as a smoothie. Delicious! I did use almond milk rather than coconut because that is what I had on hand, 2% Greek yogurt because I bought the wrong thing, and erythriol and vanilla extract because i didn’t have stevia today. It was yummy!
I can’t wait to have it my frozen pops!
Sounds great with those modifications, too! Hope you like the pops!