Watermelon Mint Pops

The third flavor in my Popsicle Series.  What's more refreshing during the summer than watermelon and mint? This was definitely the most involved of all the popsicle flavors simply because there were more ingredients and a little more prep for those ingredients. But still pretty simple to make just like the others.

Ingredients:
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup low fat yogurt (I use Stonyfield organic, plain)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 of a mini seedless watermelon
1 Tbsp lime juice
8-10 fresh mint leaves
1 Tbsp club soda (optional; this gives it a little bit of a Mojito feel)
3 Tbsp creme de menthe ( a mint liqueur)

In a medium-large bowl, blend whipping cream and sugar with a hand mixer until soft peaks form.

Dice the watermelon into bite-size pieces.  Finely mince mint leaves.  Put watermelon and mint together in the food processor and chop/pulse just a few times.

I wish we had smell-o-vision for this one! The watermelon and mint smelled so wonderful together!

Add watermelon and mint, along with yogurt, lime juice, club soda, and creme de menthe.  Stir until well blended.

pretty green color!

Using 3 oz Dixie cups, scoop the watermelon mixture into the cups almost to the top.  The original recipe says it makes 9 but I sometimes got as many as 11 cups filled. This mixture is a little more liquidy than the others. Remember to cut a small slit at the top of each cup to allow for easier removal from the pop later.  Once the cups are filled, you may insert a popsicle stick. Freeze for at least 4 hours.

Drunken Fruit Salad

Here's a great fruit salad you can take to your next summer picnic with a unique twist that everyone will love! I recently made this for a Fourth of July picnic and it was gone within minutes!

Fresh fruit is a must. Nothing frozen and thawed. Organic and local is preferable. But fresh definitely. Whatever fruits you want. There are no rules to what fruit should or should not go in a fruit salad. I say, go as crazy as you want! I chose strawberries (because they're my favorite and they're red, happy 4th!), watermelon (its the perfect summer fruit), blueberries (because there's lots of them and it provides the patriotic blue), and peaches (because they smelled so good when I walked by and it would be something a little different).

But I didn't want to do just fruit. It needed a special twist. So I decided to make a dressing. I went online and searched through all my favorite blogs and recipe pages to find the perfect dressing. I took an idea from this one, a piece of that one, and created my own Drunken Salad Dressing.

So what exactly is in this Drunken Fruit Salad Dressing, you say??  Here you go...

4 Tbsp orange juice (I prefer pulp free)
3 Tbsp honey
3 tsp Chambord (this is the drunken part)
1 Tbsp + 3 tsp lime juice (i know kind of a crazy measurement but I was experimenting!)
5 fresh mint leaves, finely minced
(Stir it all together in a small bowl until the honey is somewhat dissolved. This makes about a cup of dressing which was plenty for the large bowl of fruit I prepared.  You don't want the fruit swimming in it. You want just enough to give a little extra zing.)

Once all the fruit is cut, sliced, diced, whatever, pour the dressing in with it and gently toss the fruit and dressing together. Then let it sit in your refrigerator for at least an hour or 2 before serving. This gives the dressing a chance to soak into the fruit a little bit and for all the flavors to meld together nicely. Then you'll have a beautiful fruit salad thats both sweet and a little tart and completely refreshing on a hot summer day!