🌞🏖 Tea Popsicles - Something Fun for Summer! ⛱🏄‍♀️

When my kids were young, they loved popsicles. In the summer, I was forever buying boxes of multi-flavored popsicles or the Fun Pops Freeze Pops. Everyone had their favorite flavor or color, including me.

As I’ve gotten a bit older and more health conscious, I’ve taken to eating cleaner and not having as much sugar in my diet. Therefore, popsicles haven’t been in my repertoire for a while now. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about them because my husband occasionally asks for them.

So, I’ve been experimenting with using my summer-flavored fruit teas and making them into popsicles, or as I like to call them TEAsicles. It’s not difficult at all. And I love that I can still have a sweet, refreshing, cold popsicle with no guilt.

For the first batch of TEAsicles, I used Mango & Friends, Grandma’s Garden, and Sunny Lemonade.

Since these fruit teas are great served cold, I thought they’d be perfect to be my test subjects.

You need a few simple supplies. I hit up Amazon for some silicone popsicle molds that came with their own sticks for under $20.

As the molds will hold 12 popsicles, I decided to make all three flavors at the same time.

I used 3 heaping teaspoons of tea to 1 cup of boiling water and steeped them for 6 minutes. Then I added a cup of ice to make the liquid equal 2 cups. This chilled down the tea rapidly and shaved off a lot of time instead of letting the tea cool naturally.

I carefully poured the tea into the molds, covered them with the lid, and inserted the popsicle sticks. I froze them overnight, but I’m sure they were frozen within 4 hours.

I didn’t add anything extra to the Mango & Friends and Sunny Lemonade, but I did add a tiny amount of sugar to the Grandma’s Garden because it tasted a bit tart to me.

The taste test was fun; each flavor was good, but the texture differed from a store-bought popsicle. The TEAsicles were more like frozen flavored ice cubes on a stick. They were still cold and refreshing; I just couldn’t chew them, so they lasted a bit longer — and that may not be a bad thing.

Batch number 2 was made with only Mango & Friends.

To make the TEAsicle more creamy, I mixed in a small amount of sweetened condensed milk after the tea was brewed and before adding the ice.

And success!

This texture was more of what I was initially going for. Although these TEAsicles still have less sugar than any store-bought confection, I love that I can control how much sweetener I put in. I can also leave them as is with just the tea.

Results: I enjoyed all the TEAsicles from the original batch because they were cold, refreshing, and calorie-free, and as a dessert, they were guilt-free.

I also liked the TEAsicles made with sweetened condensed milk. Not quite as calorie-free, but still way healthier than store-bought. I think my grandkids would enjoy either version, and I would feel good about serving them these TEAsicles because I know what’s in them — or should I say what’s not in them, like food coloring or dyes.

I hope I have inspired you to make some cold TEAsicles and to put your own spin on these fun creations before summer is over. If you make some, I’d love to hear what kind you made and how they turned out.

~ Dani