Cooling down on hot days

Overall our summer has been fairly mild apart from a few hot days during which our old wooden house becomes like an oven despite insulation and fans so I have been experimenting with different icy-pole recipes from  I Quit Sugar and That Sugar Film blog.

 

Yesterday I made some Mango, Macadamia and Coconut icy-poles which are similar to the Mango Macadamia 'Weis' Bars featured in the I Quit Sugar Kids Cookbook  which is also available as an eBook. 

I made these a little differently from the recipe in the book and the next time I make them I will just mix all the ingredients together rather than have two different sections which would be quicker to make and probably less messy as it was rather a thick mixture which I found difficult to get into the moulds. 

This recipe isn't available online as it is part of the 8 week Program but I found a similar one for Mango, Coconut and Macadamia Ice Creams on The Nutrition Guru and the Chef if you want to see another variation.    

This is the way I made mine: 

Mango Macadamia and Coconut Icy Poles

2 270ml cans coconut cream (I used light)

1/2 cup dessicated coconut

1 tablespoon rice malt syrup (I will leave this out next time)

1 cup diced frozen mango

Firstly I blended the rice malt syrup, coconut cream and coconut in the food processor then poured the mixture into the moulds. I just poured in enough to fill 1/3 of the mould. I then added some crumbed macadamia nuts which I had on hand. Then froze all this for an hour or so. 

Once it started to freeze after this time, I blended the remaining coconut mixture with the frozen mango before pouring it all into the moulds on top of the coconut mixture. Then the 'sticks' were added before putting the icy-poles into the freezer overnight. 

UPDATE 27/1/16: The CEO had one of these last night and he found the coconut cream, coconut and rice malt syrup layer much too rich so if you aren't keen on coconut perhaps make the layer a lot smaller and I think you could even cut out the rice malt syrup as well. As I mentioned the next time I make them I will just mix all the ingredients together and not have layers as we were both hankering to get to the mango layer. LOL!

These were quite refreshing on a hot, humid day. However, I found the coconut cream, rice malt syrup and coconut section a little too rich so, as I mentioned before, I will mix all the ingredients together next time and not have layers and I doubt that the rice malt syrup is necessary anyway. 

As I had used two cans of coconut cream I had some mixture left after filling the moulds so just kept that in the fridge to make up more icy poles as they were eaten. They don't stay in the freezer very long around here. 

While it is still summer I might also try the I Quit Sugar Aussie Splice Blocks which are designed to get some veggies into kids as they mix spinach in with banana, avocado and mango. One of the ingredients which I probably wouldn't buy, as I don't have growing children who aren't eating their veggies, is Vital Kids and when I clicked on the link to read what it was I was surprised at the statistics stated there that only 22% of Aussie children aged 4-8 meet their recommended daily serves of vegetables and that falls to less than 5% if you remove potatoes. That is quite amazing isn't it? 

22% of Australian kids aged 4 – 8 meet their recommended daily serves of vegetables?  When you take potatoes out of this, it falls to less than 5%.* - See more at: http://www.martinandpleasance.com/brands/vital/about-vital-kids/#sthash.vFpp8qXP.dpuf

22% of Australian kids aged 4 – 8 meet their recommended daily serves of vegetables?  When you take potatoes out of this, it falls to less than 5%.* - See more at: http://www.martinandpleasance.com/brands/vital/about-vital-kids/#sthash.vFpp8qXP.dpuf

The storms which were forecast to start on Saturday finally arrived in our neck of the woods today. On Saturday night I was out in the dark using the 'night' option on my camera to try and catch a photo of the lightning in the clouds but it was a bit hit and miss. As is usual during our Aussie summers, there are some storm cells which are destructive and some of our farmers have lost their crops in recent storms which is especially sad when they were ready to harvest. Let's hope and pray that the storms forecast for the next few days just bring some much needed rain without doing any damage. 

I hope my Northern Hemisphere readers are keeping warm and safe and that my Aussie readers are also keeping safe from the fires and inclement weather that has been the norm of late in some areas.