Go to the Article: Popsicle Geekery
AWESOME! Love that you guys are deep diving on popsicles. I’ve wanted to experiment for a long time, but had no real jump off point to find what ingredient interactions would get me where I want to go. Thank you all for doing “fun” stuff like this.
In the video Grant used Xantham to stabilize and prevent separation of the mixtures, but it seems like none of the recipes call for the use xantham at all. After additional testing did you find it was better to omit any hydrocolloids rather than using as Grant described? Or are there still benefits that you left out in favor of easier recipes?
While hydrocolloids may be beneficial to suspend the mix, I wanted to present recipes that are as simple as possible. They really help when you are using liquid nitrogen and quickly freezing. They assist with adding viscosity to help make thicker layers when dipping. There are a few recipes that you can add xanthan gum to but again, these were made to be more approachable and to limit an extra step.
I just wanted to say that now, after a few weeks of experimentation (and literally dozens of variations), this series was a fantastic kickoff point for trying something new.
One of the things that makes the popsicle experimentation so fun is that you can easily scale a recipe down to the volume needed for 2 popsicles, and get a legit result. Unlike, for example, ice-cream, which requires a much larger test-batch size.
Here is a little picture of my chest-freezer setup (which holds at -20f) that gets the popsicles completely frozen in about 40 minutes.
These recipes inspired me to go all-out on homemade popsicles. My kids cannot get enough of them and producing 6 at a time in expensive cheaply made molds was driving me nuts. I found commercial stainless steel molds that hold 20 popsicles with a multi-stick holder on top and have never looked back! I love my new molds (dozens of brands of them out there, I've been using Wichemi).
