Saturday, September 26, 2015

Chocolate yogurt popsicle recipe, more or less

First off, here is a recipe for puddin' pops that I think you might like since I think it's pretty damn tasty. After the break there will be some chit-chat on my part. Please feel free to read that, too, or else skedaddle on over to your kitchen and whip up a batch of these for you and your kin.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/4 cup whole milk

• 4 oz. milk chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli milk chocolate baking chips)

• 2 cups-ish of whole milk yogurt


DIRECTIONS:

Warm the whole* milk in the microwave.

Pour the warm milk over the milk chocolate chips and let them sit for a minute and then stir it up. There might still be some chunks, but who cares, right? Those are chunks of chocolate there, not chunks of gravel (despite the appearance).

Stir in approx. 2 cups of whole milk yogurt. Mix it all up and voila, you are done. Pour that yummy stuff into popsicle molds and try not to eat them all for dinner. Although there are way worse things to eat for dinner so I won't judge. And isn't dessert for dinner one of the perks of being an adult anyway?

I will admit that I didn't measure the yogurt because I didn't want to dirty another dish. This isn't rocket science so it's not imperative to get the proportions exactly right. I found that with a fair amount of tasting and then tasting again just to make sure it was really as tasty as I thought on the first taste, this recipe was just enough to make 6 popsicles in the Zoku.

The Zoku is ridiculous and I would never have bought one for myself, but I received it as a gift from my man. And now I can't imagine my life without it. What is worse than having to wait hours and hours for a popsicle to be ready? I can tell you: not much is worse than that.

I was surprised to see some negative reviews on Amazon just now for the Zoku saying it is hard to clean and hard to get the pops out. Okay, people, what is going on here? First of all, I pretty much never clean mine because I fill the molds carefully and then put it back in the freezer where it stays clean until the next time I need it. If I do happen to defrost it to allow for putting other stuff in the freezer, I fill the molds with soapy water and let it sit for a bit and then rinse it out. What is so hard about that?

To fill it carefully I spoon the mixture into a cute little quarter-cup that has a spout on it. That's just about the right amount to fill each mold. I suppose I could use a larger measuring cup, but this little guy has a very pointy and small spout, which is perfect for getting the mixture right into the molds. I read that some people use turkey basters, which I'm sure would work, but I would not want to clean the turkey baster out afterward so that's a no for me.

As for getting the pops out of the molds, if I fill them to the line as instructed (am I the only one in the world who reads the dang instructions? Sometimes I believe this is actually true.) and then use the nifty twisty tool to unstick them they pop right out. What works best, in my opinion, is to twist-twist-twist until the pop unsticks and then twist the tool all the way off the pop instead of pulling the pop out with it. Otherwise the pop comes out of the mold on the twisty tool and you have nowhere to hold on to the pop when removing the twisty tool except by the icy pop itself.

* I am a big fan of only drinking whole milk. A lot has been written on the subject so I won't bore you with it except to say that to make milk low-fat the milk becomes farther removed from its natural state. If you are trying to eat more foods that have not been overly processed, then I recommend drinking whole milk and eating whole milk yogurt and cheeses.

I became interested in sticking with whole milk dairy when I was trying to get pregnant as that is part of a commonly recommended protocol for women trying to conceive. And the more I learned about it, the more I realized that whole milk was what I wanted to stick with for the rest of my life. Jeff was easily brought on board, too, since the full-fat ice cream tastes soooo much better AND is not that many more calories than the low-fat varieties. And of course the whole milk tastes divine compared to the low-fat version.

So very much has been written on this topic and if you google it you will find plenty, but I like this NPR piece on how whole milk will actually keep a person trimmer than low-fat, which makes a lot of sense since whole milk products are more filling and more satisfying (IMHO) so you will presumably eat less of them. A little of something delicious is better than a lot of something mediocre, no?

And here is a blog post on care2 on what happens to the vitamins when milk is skimmed and also what happens to milk when it's homogenized. I'm so lucky that I can get non-homogenized milk in glass jars from a Pennsylvania dairy at a market (Bon Vivant) near me. After paying the deposit on a bottle ($2), it costs $4.50 per half gallon, which is in the exact same range as the organic homogenized milk from the grocery store.

Interestingly, I am reading on the site listed on my milk bottles that the dairy does make skim milk. I am curious to learn more about their process! They mention that they're required by law to add the vitamins back in to the low-fat milk and I suppose with enough demand for the low-fat milks it would be silly for them not to sell it as well as the wonderful full-fat version that comes with cream on top that you gently shake to mix in. Yummmm.

I forgot to mention that I used regular yogurt, not Greek-style. I have been making my own yogurt lately and straining it right after making it, but the whey that gets strained off is super healthy, so in preparation for making puddin' pops this week I left it unstrained. If using Greek, you'd perhaps need to use more milk. So, if using homemade, just keep the whey in and you're good to go.

I don't purport to be a food blogger, but I am a lover of food and of cooking. So I spend a fair amount of time hunting around on the internet for recipes. What I have determined is that food bloggers like to talk a lot. And often not about food. Fine! Blog! Who cares? But don't make me scroll through what color you're thinking about painting your living room just to see a simple little recipe.

Get back to the basics, food bloggers. Talk about how you created the recipe and *maybe* if it will really add some color, tell a little story about the memories the ingredients evoke for you or whatever. That's all I ask.

Unfortunately, you food bloggers think that because traffic to your site is high that strangers love reading your notions. Guess what! They don't! They land on your little blog because they are trying to find out how to make a recipe, such as puddin' pops, and your blog came up in the search results. I assure you that most people are skimming riiiiight past your living room paint plans and down to the recipe itself.

And then, for the love of all things holy and delicious, why would you agree to put a video ad smack dab in the middle of the recipe?! Criminy, people. Don't delude yourself that your little rant-space disguised as a food blog is going to enable you to quit your day job. Host those ugly ads on your site if you must, but not smack dab in the center of a recipe, especially if it's STILL there on the print preview. That's just rude.

I'm under no delusions that the world needs my blogging talents, whether about food or otherwise, but since I know all too well how skimpy the search results for chocolate yogurt popsicles is, I am adding my contribution to the fray. You're welcome.

So I did wind up chit-chatting a fair bit, but if you came upon this blog post to learn someone's experience with making puddin' pops, you learned that right away at the top of the page and if you're reading this now (and we're complete strangers), then I'm glad I didn't bore your pants off.