I have a great guest post for you guys today by my friend Bethany. We go way back to our college years at BYU and she just started a super cute blog called Toddler Test Kitchen. It has recipes to make with your kids, toddler dinner ideas, and book lists. This is the perfect blog for moms with kids who are looking to find ways to engage with their kids – especially in the kitchen. Here’s a fun recipe for Piña Colada Popsicles that are perfect for the summer!
Hello! This is Bethany from the Toddler Test Kitchen! Thanks to Alexis for having me here on Learn As We Go! I am new to blogging and so excited about my project – testing out recipes that I can cook WITH and FOR my kids – who are ages 2 and 4. Today I’m sharing a new recipe I found for piña colada popsicles, plus some tips for cooking with kids, especially those little toddlers.
Here are the ingredients to make these popsicles. It was a pretty simple recipe. I find that my little ones have the best luck when I pre-measure the ingredients – not that they aren’t capable of measuring, but that their attention span is pretty short so to keep them more involved in the rest of the recipe a little prep work is helpful!
In this recipe, the kids cooking skills involved include dumping ingredients into a blender, and then pouring the blended liquid into popsicle molds. Above you can see my son dumping in all the ingredients into the blender. He loves to dump ingredients in! It’s pretty self explanatory and I can let him do it in whatever order he chooses.
Once the ingredients are well blended, the kids can help pour this (delicious) liquid into the popsicle molds. We found a little less than a quarter cup fit into our molds (from Ikea) but yours may be bigger or smaller. My 2 year old loved the taste of this pineapple coconut concoction and asked for it in a cup to drink!
Here you can see my son pouring a bit too much into the mold and we got an overflow situation! One of my biggest tips for cooking with kids is to expect a mess. When I cook on my own, I make a mess, and our little ones are even less able to contain their own spills! I’ve found when I start with a clean area, and expect to have a clean up afterwards, I am much less stressed about little overflows. Celebrate the mess!
This is mister four putting the sticks into the molds, almost ready to freeze. I think we could have made more than 6 popsicles if we hadn’t spilled and tasted so much of the liquid – depends on the size of your molds as well.
Nothing a little wipe down won’t fix 🙂
And here is our beautiful canvas of pina colada spillage! Another tip that I try to incorporate as I cook with my kids is to have them involved in the cleanup as well. Little miss two actually really enjoys wiping up spills. Since cleaning up and doing dishes is a part of cooking why not start now!
Once the molds are filled you stick them into the freezer for at least 4-6 hours or until solid. Then once they are frozen I found running the mold under warm water for about 30 seconds loosened it up perfectly, the popsicles slid out without trouble and we could enjoy them.
Piña Colada Popsicles
Ingredients
- 1 cup pineapple chunks (fresh or canned)
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup pineapple juice
- 4 tbsp coconut milk
- 4 tbsp sugar
Instructions
- 1. Combine the pineapple, milk, juice, coconut milk and sugar in a blender and puree until smooth, about one minute. 2. Pour the mixture into popsicle molds and freeze until solid, at least 4-6 hours. 3. Before removing from molds run under warm water for 30 seconds, then slide out the popsicles by the handle.
Enjoy!