News Taffy

My girls love sweets as much as any other kid, but frozen treats seem to be their favorite. We indulge in some sugary fun every once in awhile, but if I let them have icecream or popsicles as often as they'd like, they'd never eat real food! So, I have to get creative. I have found three treats to take something really great for them and make it look like something just really yummy.

First is a grape popsicle. We string grapes on wooden skewers and freeze them. That's it. But the fun my preschooler has before dinner stringing them would be enough, even if they weren't a perfect, sweet after dinner treat. It helps me give her something to stay busy and out from under my feet as well.

Next, we discovered frozen yogurt drops! You sit a ziplock bag into a cup for stability, then fill it with about a cup of your favorite yogurt. Then, cut a tiny hole in one of the bottom corners of the bag and drip little dots of yogurt onto the bottom of a cake pan. I say a cake pan because it is more mess free for those helping hands. Stick the whole thing in the freezer, and then put the dots into a bowl to eat when they're done!

Last, banana ice cream! You slice a banana onto a plate and put the plate into the freezer. Once they're frozen completely, put them into a food processor. First, it'll make banana gravel. Keep chopping and maybe pushing it down here and there, and as it thaws a bit more, it becomes creamy. I have no idea why, but frozen and puréed bananas have the exact same consistency of the creamiest soft serve ice cream ever! You can eat it soft, or put it back in the freezer a bit to scoop onto cones later. You can add flavor to it as well. We've tried peanut butter and cocoa, which was good, and other fruits too. Plain, it surprisingly has very little banana taste, so anything you add only adds to its creamy taste.

All of these take less than an hour to make and freeze. We made all three today to show you all a couple pictures and my kids now think we're celebrating something, and it's only fruit and yogurt! Win.

Until next time,
Heather