fudgesicle

Expect to see a lot of this. The popsicle molds came yesterday. Marketed as Freezer pop maker. They make all types with handy reusable plastic handles. Mostly for kids. I chose the traditional type that uses old-fashioned wooden sticks. I was visualizing dinner gatherings ending with homemade ice cream served in popsicle form. 

This was my first attempt to familiarize myself with the mold. Reviews on Amazon complained about the sticks not being all exactly perpendicular causing removal to be difficult. Ha ha ha ha ha. That kills me. There is always at least one idiot in the reviews that doesn't get what's going on. The idea is to pay attention, heat the sticks in hot water first, and insert them when the mixture is partially frozen so the angle of the sticks is manageable. Only a total dummkopf would cut themselves struggling with the lid, fer christ's sake. They must be dunked in warm water to slide out of the molds so they tend to come out a little melty. I suppose they should be immediately refrozen. That's why I always read the negative comments first, to come face to face with teh stupid. Positive reviews are reliably much less useful. 

It does take a bit of persuasion to get the popsicles out of the molds. I dunked the molds in hot water then tugged on the stick exerting constant pressure. Each time I thought the stick would pull out and leave the popsicle inside the mold, but that didn't happen. 

I went with what I knew -- ice cream, but eventually I intend to switch to Mexican style paletas, basically, fresh fruit popsicles mixed mostly with milk. I used 2% milk in these fudgesicles instead of whole milk or cream and went a little overboard with the flavors, banana, vanilla scraped from a bean since I have so many of them, and imported couverture single-source chocolate, espresso pressed through the Aeropress, and frankly, all that is going too far. I'm convinced now fewer combined flavors is better. Banana and milk, Coffee period, straight up chocolate, etc. I could be wrong.

*  3 cups 2% milk

*  1 vanilla bean scrapped

*  3 oz chocolate, thereabouts,  (I think, actually I just chipped off bits until the heated mixture got dark enough)

*  2 scoops ground coffee, enough for a pot of American coffee or for three cups espresso. This might be too much, I do not know

*  2 bananas. 

*  4 egg yolks. Heated with the milk to form a loose custard. With the banana and the chocolate, the mixture was quite thick almost like pudding. It froze quickly. So stick insertion was within half an hour of the mixture boiling. 

Here is what is totally weird. I still don't understand it. I measured how much liquid it would take to fill the 10 little molds. That turned out to be three cups exactly. I poured three cups of milk which included the four egg yolks) but then added two bananas and a significant chunk of of hard chocolate (plus the scrapping of a vanilla bean but that doesn't count for volume).  So I expected at least two bananas worth of extra mixture. Then when I poured the mixture into the molds, there was only enough to fill nine. This makes me lose my religion regarding maths. How can I ever trust flying by instruments when here I relied on actual pre-measurements?  This confounds me greatly. I looked around wondering the marvels of the universe and asked myself had I made that big a mess and the answer is no. Conclusion: make extra.