Here’s a wonderful way to enjoy your fresh or frozen elderberries! Elderberry lemonade popsicles are sweet, tart, healthy and delicious — and oh, so pretty!
The elderberries are ripe here in Minnesota and we’ve been busy harvesting them. We always preserve our elderberries in a variety of ways so we can use them in lots of different foods, beverages and medicinal remedies throughout the year. This recipe uses frozen elderberries that we keep on hand for things like baking, wine making and drinks, among other things (dried elderberries are better suited for health remedies).
You might notice that these popsicles are hot pink, not dark purple like elderberries. That’s because elderberries are pH indicators, meaning that elderberry juice-based concoctions will turn different colors depending on how acidic or alkaline they are. Since these contain lots of lemon (which is very acidic), the popsicles turn hot pink!
This explains why elderberry meringue pie is a gorgeous magenta, while elderberry schnapps is a deep, dark purplish-black (you can find both of those recipes in my elderberry book, with about 70 more, and I’ve also shared my elderberry schnapps recipe below).
I love how elderberries are such a fantastic mix of science and magic. 🙂
Here’s my simple recipe for these fun summer treats.
Elderberry Lemonade Popsicles
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup lemon juice (preferably organic or fresh squeezed)
- 3 TBS fresh or frozen elderberries
Directions:
Mix all the ingredients (I put them in a glass mason jar) and microwave for two minutes or heat to a simmer on the stove. Press the elderberries with a fork to extract as much juice, flavor and color as you can. Strain and add one cup of cold water. Pour into popsicle or push-up molds and freeze.
Enjoy!
Note: This makes a little over 2 cups of quick elderberry lemonade, and it’s especially strong (sweet and tart) because we find that it makes the best popsicles that way. Note that your popsicle or push-up molds may need more or less liquid. If you’d like to check ahead of time to see how much liquid your set holds, fill the molds with water and then pour all of the water into a large measuring cup to measure the total, and adjust your recipe accordingly.
I use these push-up popsicle molds that we use for homemade push pops all year long. I love that they’re a healthy BPA-free silicone and that they make it easy to make homemade juice push-pops of all different flavors. The kids love them, too.
As I mentioned, we preserve our elderberries in all different ways — frozen, dried, canned as juice, in jams and jellies, in canned elderberry pie filling, and so on.
When I make regular elderberry lemonade, I tend to use a quart of canned elderberry juice instead of frozen berries. I add lemon juice and a simple sugar syrup (water and sugar heated on the stove until the sugar is dissolved).
We also can elderberry lemonade concentrate, which has become one of our friends’ and family members’ favorite ways to use elderberries in the world. It’s so good! I also love the vivid color when the sun shines through the jars when I’m canning.
I’ll post the recipe for that soon.
And of course you can find directions for how to can, freeze, dry, etc. your elderberries and use them in all kinds of recipes like these in the book.
In the meantime, you might also enjoy these elderberry recipes to also use your elderberries, from here and over at our family foraging blog:
Elderberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes
Elderberry Cream Cheese Spread
Elderberry Quick Apple Juice and Elderberry Tincture
Enjoy your elderberries!
** Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases made through clicking on these links earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!
2 Replies to “Recipe: Elderberry Lemonade Popsicles”
Comments are closed.