Recipe: Blackberry Lavender Popsicles

I came across this recipe in the magazine, Bust, of all places. It looked simple enough, and sounded delicious and refreshing for this time of year, so I gave it a try.

First and foremost, I had to pick up some Popsicle molds. This proved harder than expected, but I finally found this cute set at Target for $3.49:

Here are the ingredients:

• Blackberries (2 heaping cups)
• Sugar (Calls for 1 cup, I used 1/2 cup)
• Fresh Lavender Buds (2 Tbsp) I found these at Whole Foods
  
• Fresh Lemon Juice (6 Tbsp from 2-3 lemons)

Instructions:

Put blackberries, sugar, water and lavender in a saucepan-

Bring ingredients to a boil (I just want to point out-this smelled wonderful!) -

Reduce heat and simmer for 8 minutes.

Mash ingredients with a potato masher (I didn't have one, so I used a whisk and a ladling spoon) to extract the most possible juice out of the berries-

Let cool about a half an hour in the refrigerator (I put the entire saucepan on a trivet and put it in the fridge)

Strain mixture into large measuring cup with a pour spot, using a fine mesh strainer or sieve-

Add lemon juice-

(As you can see above, I ended up with about 14 ounces of mixture. Using these particular popsicle molds, I can use that amount to make 6 popsicles)

Pour mixture into popsicle molds and freeze for approximately 4 hours-

Before enjoying your popsicles, learn from my mistake here - when you remove the popsicle molds from the freezer, don't attempt to just pull the stick out. If you do, you will only get the stick. I tried this method on all 4 (because I was sure one of them would come out correctly, but none of them did), then had to refreeze the whole batch again.

Last night I tried again, this time I thought "OK Genius - Run hot water on them first to loosen the sides of the popsicle, then remove the stick." Sure enough, that worked -

After a whole week, I was finally able to eat my creation and it was awesome! The second I removed the popsicle, there was a fantastic aroma of lavender. And the first bite was full of blackberry goodness. They were such a perfect, refreshing summer treat. I couldn't believe how great these came out!

I put this into the WW Recipe Builder and it came out as follows:

2 Cups Blackberries, 2.5 points
1/2 Cup Sugar, 8 points
Lemon, 0 points
Lavender (not even listed, but I am sure it is 0 points)
Total = 10.5 points
divided by 6 servings = 1.5 points per popsicle (WW's recipe builder said 1 point, but it's really closer to 2 points each, so I'm calling it 1.5)

And if you are interested, here it the accompanying article of the woman who created the recipe and sells popsicles out of her super cool trailer in the midwest: