So, over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at concocting fairly successful ice pop recipes. This week though, we had a major ice pop fail.
The plan: Earth Day ice pops!
It sounds good in theory right? Cedar, my son and I thought, “Sure, Earth Day ice pops are doable.” We wanted little global pops, which means you’d need green, blue and something kind of brown to represent the earth. We colored some vanilla ice cream blue and green using natural food coloring. Then we pureed some blueberries. The trick was to mix it all together in some sort of earthy swirl.
In my head it seemed awesome. My head is often wrong.
The plan: That’s when it got complicated. Cedar’s idea was to freeze the colors in single layers, which I personally thought might be too time consuming. My idea was to freeze both shades of ice cream and the blueberries until semi-frozen, then scoop them into ice pop molds. We tried both. We froze a layer of blue, then later scooped in the other colors in a sort of swirl design.
The sad, sad results:
Earth Day ice pops - not the best idea ever
But wait, it gets worse:
Because we froze the first blue layer separately, the ice pops totally came apart.
Only part of the ice pop came out of the mold
Note to self – don’t freeze clumps of ice cream and blueberries in layers. So, we had this cool idea that failed. It’s okay though. Live and learn. If you have an idea for cute (and workable) Earth Day ice pops leave them in the comments.
Now, my plan was to offer an adorable Earth Day treat you could make with your kids. Obviously, these ice pops aren’t that treat. To make up for this massive fail I offer you some actual cute Earth Day treats…
Organic Earth Day Cookies
Organic Earth Day Cookies!
These delicious cookies turned out perfectly (unlike the ice pops) and they’re the perfect cute Earth Day treat to make with your kids. Plus, they’re somewhat educational. They’re also really yummy. I used an adapted almond vanilla cookie dough recipe from Bake at 350.
Ingredients for Organic Almond Vanilla Cookie Dough
- 3 cups all-purpose organic flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup organic sugar
- 2 sticks organic butter cut into chunks
- 1 organic egg
- 1 teaspoons Fair Trade Certified & organic vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon organic almond extract
- A bit of Fair Trade & organic baking cocoa
- Natural food coloring – yellow and blue
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laMaking Your Earth Day Cookies
The instructions are above in the slideshow, but just in case you don’t want to flip through, I’ve included them below as well.
- Cream the sugar and butter with a hand mixer or spoon then add the egg and both extracts and mix until creamy smooth. Combine the flour and baking powder then add 1/3 at a time to the wet mix. You’ll need to use your hands for the final third. The dough should be crumbly, not super smooth, but that’s good.
- Color your dough into three colors – blue, brown and green using cocoa powder and natural food coloring. Cedar and I made 70% of our dough blue, to really represent the earth and the rest half brown and half green. After coloring, have your kids scoop a bit of each dough color onto a flat surface and sort of press the colors together before rolling out, or when you do roll the colors will come apart.
- Roll your dough 1/4 inch thick (at least). This is key. This is not meant to be thin dough. We tried a thinner batch and they weren’t as tasty.
- Cut into shapes such as circles, peace signs or hearts then place on a parchment lined baking sheets and bake for 7-10 minutes at 350. After baking, remove from hot cookie sheets asap, cool on a rack and enjoy.
A quick word about food coloring…
Over the years I’ve been using India Tree Natural Decorating Colors
Chocolate Craft liquid colors are all-natural, plant based and made in the USA. They contain beets, carrots, cabbage, turmeric and plant glycerin. They’re animal products, soy and wheat free.
What Earth Day treats (if any) are you making?
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