Watermelon Mojito with Lime Crema Popsicles

We are very close with The Neighbours and spend most warm summer nights sitting together on the front porch, drinking wine and eating and enjoying each other's company. Sometimes we like to make girly drinks or a pitcher of sangria when it's too hot for wine so it makes sense to try to turn some of our favourite cocktails into frozen treats. The upside is that it doesn't look like all we do is sit out there and drink because people will walk by and think "look at all of those lovely wholesome people enjoying a fruit popsicle on this balmy summer evening!" As long as I make sure that I colour code the sticks so the kids don't grab a frozen bloody caesar by mistake, I think we are good to go.



A mojito seemed like the perfect choice for my first booze pop. Nothing is more summery than all that lime and mint and ice. I saw a couple of recipes for watermelon mojitos and decided to go that route because I love watermelon more than almost anything. Once I found a recipe that sounded perfect, I used that as my base but something was missing. Because I didn't want to make that many so I started by cutting the recipe in half and finally,  it occurred to me that what it needed was a really limey, sweet, creamy layer in there to balance out the tartness of the actual drink.

After tasting the watermelon/rum mixture, it wasn't as minty as I would like so I added about a tbls of chopped mint to it and didn't strain it out. Next time I would add even more mint or even infuse the watermelon juice with a bunch of mint and then strain that out.

I only gave the first layer 45 minutes to set because that had worked well for the other popsicles but there was a lot of seepage in these. The next time I will let the boozy layers harden for a longer period because my lime cream layer migrated, so I have changed the recipe to reflect that. It's probably the rum that makes them take longer to set so keep that in mind when making poptails. The taste was still fabulous but I would have liked the look of a more defined layer. If I eat enough of them I guess I won't care what they look like anymore so there is that too.


Watermelon Mojito with Lime Crema Popsicle
Adapted from Watermelon Mojito Popsicles by Bakers Royale
makes about 6 or 7 small 2 oz pops

1/2 cup watermelon juice
2 tbls lime juice
1 tbls mint simple syrup
1/2 light rum
1 cup soda water
about a tbls of chopped mint
cream layer
1 tbls condensed milk
2 tbls vanilla yogurt
1 tbls lime juice
lime zest from half a lime

put the watermelon in a blender and puree completely. Strain the juice into a bowl using a fine mesh strainer until you have 1/2 cup of juice. Combine the watermelon juice, lime juice, mint syrup and rum in the blender with about a tbls of chopped mint and whiz that up to chop the mint up finely. Divide that mixture in half. Add half of the club soda to one half of the juice mixture and fill the molds almost halfway. Put the other half of the juice in the fridge and put the mold into the freezer for 60 minutes to set up.
 Check after the 60 minutes and if the bottom layer is set, add a thin layer (about 1 tsp in each) of the lime yogurt and put the mold back in the freezer until that layer is set, about 40 minutes. Then, take the remaining watermelon juice mixture out of the fridge, add the second 1/2 cup of soda water and stir it together. Fill the molds the rest of the way with that, put the sticks in and return to the freezer for at least four or five hours, preferably overnight.