Happy 4th of July! These are by far my favorite pops from our “Popsicle Week” adventures. How can you possibly not love anything that looks like a rocket ship?! And they’re green to boot, although I’m quite sure that real aliens probably don’t taste like pistachios. Using these Rocket Pop molds really made me wish that someone sold a popsicle tray Tardis. I think the Doctor would approve of Blueberry Tardis Pops, don’t you?

Pistachio Pudding Pops
Adapted from Krystina Castella’s new book: Pops! Icy Treats for Everyone published by Quirk Books.
Variations of additional Pudding Pops can be found at IcyPops.com

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups milk (Note: Do yourself a favor and use whole milk)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups shelled pistachios
Green food coloring

In a food processor or blender, grind 3/4 cup of the nuts to a paste. (Note: I couldn’t get my pistachios to form a paste without adding a teaspoon or two of water).

In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

Add the milk and pistachios and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly for 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat as soon as the mixture thickens. (Note: This took approximately 12 minutes for me on a gas stove).

Stir in the butter until melted. Add the vanilla. Let cool in refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Add 3 drops green food coloring and mix with a spoon to combine.

Pour into the pop molds. Insert the sticks. Freeze for at least 8 hours.

Remove from the freezer. Let stand at room temperature for 5 minutes before removing the pops from the molds. (Note: Be gentle! I found that running the molds under warm water also helped to neatly loosen them).

Contrary to popular belief not everything in my kitchen comes out camera ready. In fact, more often than I’d like to admit some dishes come out looking like this. A warning to you all: if the popsicle box instructions state that you should leave a half inch of room at the top of the mold you should do just that. As liquids freeze they expand, and if you’re a greedy jerk and choose not to heed their words of advice you’ll end up with a freezer shelf full of exploding Root Beer Float pops. Still tasty, but not exactly pretty and very sticky. Stay tuned! Take two for these treats will occur tomorrow.

Cheesesteak wasn’t the only dangerously delicious food CK and I sampled in Philly.  Our weekend both began and ended with food coma inducing extravagances.  Consumption of beer and ice cream with the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park led to pretzels, cookies, and smoothies at the Reading Terminal Market and finally ended with our first Water Ices at RIta’s Water Ice mere moments before we were dropped off at the airport. The calorie count for this trip had to have tipped the scales at levels none of us would want to admit to or coherently think about ever again.  Ladies and gentleman, please loosen your belts as I present to you the food of Philly in all its glory:

I don’t think there’s anything quite as good as a cold beer on a warm night at a ballpark. Even though the Red Sox are my true love I have to admit that I felt pretty pampered at the Phillies state of the art stadium.  The highlight of my evening though was this adorable rainbow sprinkle topped sundae.  The next day our adventures in the Reading Terminal Market brought me face-to-face with the most goregous basil I’ve ever seen.  You have no idea how much I wished I could smuggle two of those lush plants home with me on the plane.  Then I turned the corner and ran smack into a table full of perfect peppers sold by the bagful for only 99 cents.  This made my jaw drop since we usually pay more than a dollar for a single red pepper.  Oh what I could have done with just one of those packages…

CK and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat one of these sinful chocolate covered Chocolate Chip cookies at the Famous Fourth Street Cookie Company.  Than we chased our shared sugar shock with a glass of whole milk.  I honesty haven’t drank whole milk in probably 15 years.  You have no idea how good this combination was.  The next few items we thankfully just admired from afar including these bizarre chocolate covered onions made famous at the Custom Made Chocolate by Mueller shop.  Apparently they also make anatomically correct chocolate hearts as well but I unfortunately missed that photo op.

Doug insisted on ordering a smoothie made with wheat grass.  As a group we all collectively agreed his drink at the Four Seasons Juice Bar tasted like dirt.  Not being particularly fond of such earthy flavors CK and I drank a much less offensive banana and pineapple version.  Some of the kiosks sold pretty nasty stuff like these turkey necks.  My absolute favorite part of the market was a small area called The Cookbook Stall.  I could have stayed there all day looking at the books.  I honestly think working in that store would make me the happiest person in the world.  I took an embarrassing amount of photos while browsing the shelves.  The clerk probably thought I was a complete and total nut.  Here’s a crab waiting to be someone’s dinner.  He tried to make friends with us but I don’t really care for crab.

Everyone loves bacon so I had to include this image of what probably amounts to twenty pounds of the fatty stuff.  All of the seafood looked so fresh and inviting.  This shot of the masses eating is a good indicator for the level of business that this market has.  It was absolutely packed.  We concluded our trip with various flavors of RIta’s Water Ice.  I had banana and vanilla.  Water ice is similar in texture to a 7-Eleven slurpee but comes in a much more varied array of flavors.

So were you keeping track?  How many calories do you really think we ate over our three day excursion?  I don’t even have pictures of all of the fabulous things that Jen and Doug fed us at their home including some of the best pecan waffles I’ve ever had.  Please send me the recipe Jen!  It was so great to have someone cook for me for a change.  A girl could really get used to that.

Don’t forget! You have until Noon (EST) on Monday, July 7th to enter the contest to win your very own copy of Krystina Castella’s Pops! Icy Treats for Everyone. Simply follow this link and leave a comment. It couldn’t be easier.

Growing up popsicles were simple affairs.  Since my favorite color was and still is purple I would only eat grape popsicles.  This meant our freezer was usually well stocked with cherry, lime, and orange until I got hard up enough to eat the other flavors.  If I ever made homemade ice pops I did so covertly using Mountain Dew (I’m losing my mind a little just thinking about this) and an ice cube tray studded with toothpicks.  As I’ve mentioned before I was a kitchen sneak.  Occasionally I also attempted to recreate pudding pops in pastel Dixie cups but they never tasted as good as the ones Bill Cosby urged us to beg our moms for during Saturday morning cartoons.  Unfortunately this led me to really not care for traditional popsicles at all.

But then I discovered Krystina Castella’s new book: Pops! Icy Treats for Everyone (published by Quirk Books) and simply put I’m absolutely blown away by the fantastic liberties she has taken with what is generally considered by the vast majority of families as a frozen grape juice concoction topped off with a craft stick.  Please believe me when I say that you have never seen popsicles like this before.  These pops are multi-layered, full of complex flavors, and truly unique ingredient blends.

The table of contents includes sections on: Healthy Energy Pops, Fruit Juice Pops, Soda Fountain Pops, Cream and Pudding Pops, Coffee and Tea Pops, and Cocktail Pops.  The “Cocktail Pops” section in particular caught my eye since it includes a Mojito Pop and I’ve been on a huge mojito kick lately.  Other pops I can’t wait to test out include Sweet Martini Pops, Thai Iced Coffee Pops, and Sugar Pumpkin Pops.  I don’t know about you, but Summer just got about twenty times more exciting for me!  In the introduction to the cookbook Krystina mentions the term “kidults” and how popsicles fit right into this cupcake buying, toy loving, crafty “grown-up” lifestyle.  I couldn’t agree more.

Please stay tuned for “Popsicle Week” on ErinCooks.com and my recreation of a few of Krystina’s amazing treats.  You’ll have to bare with me.  I had to order popsicle molds from Amazon and I’m impatiently awaiting their arrival.  The Kitchn recently posted an excellent article on summer popsicle molds and I purchased several of these items.  If you are lucky enough to already own molds than please feel free to dive right in and check out the accompanying cookbook website appropriately called IcyPops.com for ideas and recipes.

Over the past month I’ve made a few fun additions to my kitchen and in the spirit of Pee-Wee Herman please meet “Shelfy!  Unfortunately this shelf doesn’t chat with me and give sage advice but it does help immensely with the serious kitchen cabinet overload I’d been experiencing. Initially I thought I wanted a more traditional baker’s rack, but after searching around I couldn’t find one that didn’t seen horribly old fashioned.  Then CK and I went to Ikea, or as my friend Julia refers to it “Disneyland for Grown-ups.”  At Ikea I wrote down and crossed out literally six different shelving units until we got to the very end of the store and I saw this system: The Omar.  For once in my life I found exactly what I wanted and it was *gasp* the cheapest one.  So I ended up happy, the cupboards are a little less cluttered, and CK didn’t have to take out a personal loan to buy me a baker’s rack.

Last week I was determined to win Jenny Frazier’s cryptic typography based contest that she hosted at her blog All Eyes on Jenny.  So I put my Nancy Drew thinking cap on and broke out my mad “googling” skills.  The first day of the contest honestly left me clueless, but than Jenny started to reveal little clues and I finally figured out what the answer was.  Last night my pretty pretty prize was waiting for me when I got home and it was promptly hung on the wall in my kitchen, just high enough above my pink KitchenAid so that it doesn’t end up covered in cake batter.   Obviously all of the blogging in this household happens in the kitchen, even Chris sits at the dining room table to work.  So much for that spare room we made into an office…