Looking for a sugar-free, low-carb summer treat? Need to find healthy snacks for the kids?
These wholesome strawberry popsicles are a great way to stay cool, keep eating right, and take advantage of summer's fruit bounty.
All it takes is one pound of berries and a little sugar substitute to fill your freezer with 12 three-ounce frozen treats good enough for company!
Recipe Zaar was replaced by Food.com a few years ago, which isn't as user friendly as the old recipe site was.
They removed the ability to find a list of the most recently reviewed recipes, added eternal scrolling into their new design (a serious pain), and ditched their complete list of A to Z recipes that made it convenient to use.
Today, they only have recipe categories, so it's difficult to find what I want.
I stopped going there shortly after they took over because it was easy to see that the usability wasn't coming back.
When I first saw the recipe for these strawberry popsicles at Recipe Zaar in 2007, I was really excited!
Not only because I wanted to try my hand at making homemade popsicles that summer, but these frozen strawberry treats were made with real strawberries, rather than red Kool-Aid or strawberry-flavored yogurt.
I could easily adapt them to fit our low-carb lifestyle.
At the time, I had lots of frozen strawberries in the freezer that we had picked up in bulk at a good price. Freezing makes the berries accessible to us throughout the year, and the frozen berries are perfect for making a low-carb fresh strawberry pie.
I washed the berries, removed the green portion on top, and tossed what I didn't need into a zip-lock bag.
And yes, I left them whole.
Bag and berries went into the freezer that way.
Since you don't bake fresh strawberry pie, in their frozen state, whole berries retain their shape after you cover them up with a sugar-free, low-carb glaze.
Nothing could be quicker or easier to make.
In addition to freezing lots of whole berries for pie, I also sliced up some of them and tossed those into a separate bag.
I kept these in recipe-sized portions because once they freeze, the berries will be difficult to measure out. Sliced frozen berries work nicely for homemade protein shakes and more of these yummy popsicles, of course.
How Many Strawberries Do You Need for These Popsicles?
Three cups of fresh strawberries fills a one-pound basket. That was the size they were selling at Super Walmart in 2007, when I first wrote this post.
Today, strawberries come in enclosed, see-through, plastic containers in a variety of sizes, depending on your store of choice. And sometimes, you'll even find different sizes from week to week.
Costco sells berries in huge baskets, while our local grocer sells them in one and two-pound sizes. But sometimes they have 1-1/2 pound baskets as well. So make sure that you check the package and pick up the correct amount.
For a large Costco basket, you get a whopping 3 to 4 pounds of strawberries, which would require you to multiply the recipe 3 or 4 times. This is why I generally just freeze what I can't use in a couple of days.
I haven't seen those small pint baskets anywhere, in a few years, but I've seen them at Pixabay, so if that's what you have in your area, a pint holds two cups of berries.
For 2 cups, cut the water down to 1-1/2 cups and lower the sugar substitute to equal 1/2 cup of sugar. A pint of berries will give you 8 popsickles instead of 12.
All of these adaptions produce strawberry popsicles with the same carb count unless you change the size of your cups. Otherwise, all you're changing is the number of popsicles you're making.
Strawberry Popsicle Form and Sticks
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| Popsickle Sticks can be purchased from a craft store or your nearest dollar or discount store. |
There are plastic popsickle forms on the market today, but I just used the small 3-ounce plastic bathroom cups available at any grocery store.
For popsickle sticks, I picked them up at the dollar store when they were available, so I already had them on hand. They are also available at your local crafts store.
Each plastic cup held about 1/4 cup of actual strawberries, not counting the water. This was a great size because 2-1/3 carbs is easy to work into any low-carb plan, even if you're eating below 20.
Using frozen berries made these popsicles thick enough to hold the sticks on their own, without any other props needed.
Sweeteners
When I made these, Splenda Quick Packs were still available. They were a very concentrated powder that was marketed for sweetening Kool-Aid. One packet was equal to 1 full cup of sugar. There was nothing special about the Quick Packs, so just use your favorite non-carb sweetener.
Sugar alcohols will make the popsickles sticky, though, and often produce gastrointestinal problems, so keep that in mind if you're making these for the kiddies. Pick a sweetener that they can tolerate.
To sweeten with a sugar-free syrup, like Davinci or Torani, simply replace some of the water called for in the recipe with the sugar-free syrup. Strawberry syrup would make these super good, but coconut, blueberry, or another complementary flavor would also work well.
Real Strawberry Popsicles
Ingredients:3 cups frozen strawberries
2-1/4 cups water
sweetener to equal 3/4 cup sugar
Toss the strawberries into the blender with water and sugar substitute. Whirl until smooth, stopping and stirring the mixture a bit, when necessary. Pour into twelve 3-ounce bathroom cups, insert popsicle stick, and freeze until firm.
Once firm, you can store the popsicles together in the freezer. I normally toss them all together into a gallon-sized zip-lock bag.
Makes 12 popsicles, about 2-1/2 net carbs each
**If you are using fresh strawberries and the mixture comes out too thin to hold the popsickle sticks, you can place the cups on a small cookie sheet or in a metal pan that will fit on a shelf in your freezer. Top with foil that you have pressed down enough to see the outline of the cups. Cut a small slit in the foil directly over the center of each cup, then very carefully insert popsicle stick, making sure it is well balanced and straight. Freeze until firm.
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