farmers market and frozen treats

Labor day weekend was good. But I think all 3- day weekends are. They seriously are the perfect combination of restful and productive. Here are a few of the activities we partook in over the weekend:

Saturday we went out for a little date night- drinks and entertainment downtown at the dueling piano bar followed by late night appetizers. I think being a pianist at one of those places would be the best, most fun job ever. And it wouldn't hurt making a couple hundred in tips a night either.

Sunday we finally made it to the farmers market. We have gone in the past and enjoyed ourselves, and this year was no exception, so I don't know why it took us until September to finally go (oh wait I do know, Twins). 

We loaded up on fresh produce- getting the ingredients to make a few treats off my summer bucket list as well as a few impulse purchases.

We also snagged some mini donuts and tacos for a makeshift lunch.

Once we made it home I tackled two more items on my list: homemade popsicles and homemade ice cream sandwiches. Both were fairly easy to whip up and considerably better than the store bought versions.

Blueberry Lemonade Popsicles

I had originally wanted to do raspberry but could not find any at the farmers market and was not about to do another trip to the grocery store and blueberries were only $1 a pint at the farmers market so blue-lemonade popsicles it was.

Ingredients:
-3/4 cup sugar
-1 3/4 cup water
-1 cup fresh lemon juice (6ish lemons)
-1/2 cup pureed blueberries

Combine sugar and 3/4 cup water in saucepan. Heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Next stir in the remaining one cup of water and chill liquid in fridge or freezer. Meanwhile puree 1 pint of blueberries in food processor or blender (you could easily do a little less, and still have delicious popsicles). Combine lemon juice, chilled sugar water, and blueberry juice in bowl. Pour mixture into popscicle molds. Wait 5-6 hours and then enjoy!

The above mixture made enough to fill one 6-pack Tupperware popsicle mold as well as 3 champagne glasses. I really liked the flavor and tartness level of these popsicles and would make them again exactly as-is, David would probably have toned them down a bit. So be wary- if you don't like tart foods this recipe may not be for you.

Chocolate and Peanut butter Cookie with Banana "Ice Cream" Sandwich

I've wanted to make homemade ice cream sandwiches for awhile but since I don't have an ice cream maker it seemed impossible if I wanted to truly deem them "home made" (although I think David would be just as happy with half-home made sandwiches). But then I ran across banana "ice cream" (frozen banana puree essentially) repeatedly on pinterest and decided it was worth a try.

I started off with making these cookies, just omitting the chocolate chips. I've made them before and enjoyed them so I knew they would both taste good and be a good base to my sandwich. I made them slightly larger than I would have if I were just going to eat them as cookies and before baking them I rolled them out and flattened them slightly on the sheet. I then proceed to follow the baking instructions. These ended up having the perfect sturdy on the bottom, yet chewy in the middle texture for ice cream sandwiches, imo.

Then for the ice cream I cut up 5 bananas into pieces on a plate and put them in the freezer for a few hours. Once they were frozen through, I tossed them in the food processor for a few minutes and let the Cuisinart do all the hard work and turn the bananas into ice cream- and really initially they do have an ice-cream-like texture. Oh, I tossed some chocolate chips in there too at some point and some peanut butter. I think some cocoa powder would have been good in there as well, unfortunately I was all out.

I then proceeded to make my sandwiches. I wish I would have frozen the cookies first because, though they were room temperature (I had made them the day before), they still caused the bananas to melt faster which gave some of the sandwiches more of a banana-puree texture rather than an ice cream texture. Otherwise assembly went smoothly and they were a hit!

David really liked the banana filling as is, which surprised me (he usually lets me know what he would do differently). And since it is 100% bananas these treats are 1/3 health food or you could just round up and say entirely a health food. I liked them just fine as they were, although I think real ice cream would have of course been better, but once I covered the sandwich in home made chocolate hardshell they really were delicious! Some variety of these will definitely be made more often.

See what a great weekend it was full of fun and good food?! Come back tomorrow to find out what the "productive" portion of our weekend was (as if crossing 3 things off my bucket list wasn't enough)!