Egg-Shaped Yogurt Pops

Holidays like Halloween and Easter, which are most often filled with chocolate, candy, and other junk can definitely be a little challenging when you work hard to not have your child eat any of those things.  And while I’m certainly not ready to throw in the towel and pass the jellybeans her way, I also really don’t want her to ever feel like she’s missing out on something special.  My solution?  Creating treats that are fun and delicious, but healthy at the same time.  I won’t deny that it takes a little bit of extra planning, some extra effort, and some extra time, but for me, it’s 100% worth it that my little love gets to enjoy and indulge, while maintaining a wholesome, healthy diet.  Needless to say, when I saw this adorable idea on Play Eat Grow, I knew I had to try a version of my own for Miss G and her cousins.  

Before I could get to making the popsicles themselves, I had to prepare the moulds first.  And by *I*, I mean I had to ask my hubby to drill holes in the bottoms of the plastic eggs, to which he recruited my father-in-law’s help.  The two of them disappeared into the garage for a minute, and returned in no time with the job done.  

For the filling, I knew I’d have to make them a little sweeter than I normally would in order to coax my niece and nephews into eating them, but I also wanted to keep the ingredients very simple.  Grae and I popped a cup of plain organic yogurt, a cup of no-sugar-added frozen berries, and 3 tablespoons of pure maple syrup (you could easily do with less – half even) into Grandma Sue’s food processor, and blended it up until nearly smooth.  My plan was to fill a piping bag and carefully pipe the mixture into the closed plastic eggs via the drilled hole, but at the last minute, I decided to go with a less finicky and much more messy method.  Basically, I dunked the egg halves into the mixture to fill them up separately, then quickly slapped the two halves together trying to lose as little as possible in the process. It worked fairly well.

With the eggs full, I plugged the drilled holes with my fingertips, quickly ran them under some cool water to clean off the exterior of the eggs, then popped them into an empty egg carton and added sucker sticks into the holes.  We froze them for several hours, and voila!  A new Easter treat was ready.

The good news is that most everyone really liked them.  Even my 6 year old nephew who tried a piece of apple for the first time this weekend ate about a 1/4 of his before leaving it to melt in a cup (pretty much  a huge success in my books).  And most importantly, Grae loved them.  While her cousins moved on to apple pie, Jell-O dessert, and salt water taffy afterwards,  she happily asked for another popsicle. Yay.

♥ 

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