Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberry & Coconut Popsicles

Hold onto your sticks everyone, because it’s Popsicle Week!

This is one of my favorite weeks of the (virtual) year, actually, because in addition to getting to make slash eat delicious, frozen treats, we also get to mix and mingle with a huge community of bloggers with popsicles on the brain.  I mean, have you seen this list of genius?!?  So much goodness over there.  We’re going to need more popsicle molds.

 

In previous years I’ve tried to mix it up, tackling everything from Date Shake Pops to Dark Chocolate Pudding Pops to Honeydew Agua Fresca Pops (not to mention the Watermelon Limesicles and Blackberry Root Beer Float popsicles that have shown up around these parts), but this year I wasn’t sure exactly where to go.  Creamy or fruity?  Chocolatey or chock full of coconut?

The answer, dear friends, is all of the above.

I settled on a creamy, coconut-milk-based, syrupy-roasted-strawberry and handful-of-white-chocolate-chips-for-good-measure-filled popsicle.  They are PRETTY GOOD, if I do say so myself.  They’re just subtly sweet, but packed with intensely strawberry-ish strawberries, creamy coconut flavor and a hint of brown sugar and white chocolate.  Get into it!

I think they’d be Calder-approved, too, if he could, you know, eat things.  He mostly stared at them in confusion, if we’re being honest, but I think I detected a glimmer of pop-citement in those baby blues.  Gotta teach them young, right?

Happy #PopsicleWeek, everyone!

Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberry & Coconut Popsicles

Popsicles ahead!  I like the layered look of the coconut cream, berries, and brown sugar mixture, but feel free to just whisk the brown sugar into the entire can of coconut milk (cream and all).  Also, you can easily swap in blueberries, raspberries or blackberries for the strawberries in this recipe, if you’d like.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups strawberries, hulled and sliced in half
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
• pinch kosher salt
• 1 (14 oz) can full fat coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons mini white chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, with a rack set in the center position.

Toss the strawberries, olive oil, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and salt together on a sheet pan.  Spread the berries out in an even layer.  Roast the strawberries until puckered and very juicy, about 20 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let cool.

Open the can of coconut milk and skim some of the thick, white coconut cream from the top of the can, dolloping a bit of cream in the bottom of 8 popsicle molds.  Whisk the remaining two tablespoons brown sugar into the rest of the can of coconut milk.

Drop the roasted strawberries into the popsicle molds over the coconut cream, and divide the white chocolate chips among each.  Finish the pops by pouring the brown sugar/coconut milk mixture evenly over everything, filling the molds with a bit of room to spare.

Allow the popsicles to set in the freezer for a few hours before running the molds under warm water to release the pops.  Enjoy immediately!

Makes 8 pops.