Strawberry-Watermelon Popsicles

After a string of cool fall-like days, summer came roaring back yesterday. Abundant sunshine and temperatures over 90 degrees – fair to say I was in heaven. I wish I could have bottled that weather up and made it last for two more weeks! Since that wasn’t feasible, I did the next best thing, spending several hours working outside on the deck with my computer just to soak up as much of the day as possible.

Can you tell I’m still struggling with the transition to fall? I can’t remember a year where I’ve had so much trouble turning the calendar and accepting the changing seasons…

Yesterday’s weather provided the perfect excuse to enjoy a big bowl of homemade ice cream but when I went to the freezer in search of something, I discovered we were all out. The horror! 🙂 Luckily, I found a few of these strawberry-watermelon popsicles hiding out on the back of one of the shelves and they worked just as well. Maybe even better in fact since our vacation is rapidly approaching and the popsicles are a lot more bathing suit-friendly!

These popsicles are ridiculously simple, just four ingredients and about 5 or 10 minutes of prep work required. And for your work, you’re rewarded with a light and refreshing, sweet and fruity treat. You could probably even dial the sugar back if your fruit was sweet, making these even healthier. The popsicles are a great grown-up substitute for those freeze pops (the ones in the plastic sleeves, you remember right?) we so loved as kids. It’s still technically summer for another 10 days so you have time to whip up a batch of these strawberry-watermelon popsicles as a proper send-off 🙂

Strawberry-Watermelon Popsicles
barely adapted from Everyday Food, July/August 2009

{Note: If you don’t have a popsicle mold, I’m sure you could use paper cups and wooden sticks in a pinch too.}

1 lb seedless watermelon
4 oz strawberries, hulled and halved
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Add the watermelon to your blender and puree (you might need to do this in batches). Strain the pureed watermelon through a fine-mesh strainer into a large measuring cup (press on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Repeat with the strawberries – I strained them also to remove the seeds but you can leave them if you’d rather. Add the sugar and lime juice to the measuring cup and whisk to dissolve the sugar completely.

Pour into your popsicle molds. Freeze for 30 minutes, then insert the popsicle sticks. Freeze completely then serve.

Makes about 6 popsicles