Summer sweets

I think I made ice cream at least once a week last summer. This summer, the old glaciere is gathering dust on the refrigerator, where it's been since September. (Bigger kitchen anyone? Yes, me, please!) Dieting? Me? No. Have I finally realized that, as a 60s-sh woman whispered to me in the check-out aisle at Jo-Ann's, "Sugar is poison." Again, certainly not this family. (You don't want to get me started on the real poisons -- chemical crap that ... oh, wait, I seem to be getting started.)

The answer: Jell-O. And popsicles. These cool fruity treats seem to have usurped ice cream's place in my heart. Fruit starting to head south in the fridge or on the counter? Into the blender with it. Sometimes I don't even give the bruises a chance to show. We've made strawberry Jell-O (gelatin, technically, I suppose, or jelly as Nigella would say, since no brand-name products are involved), peach Jell-O, strawberry/peach Jell-O, orange Jell-O (twice, since the first batch turned out inedibly bitter. Who's the fool who put the pith and seeds in the blender?), and a grape Jell-O so subtly and elegantly flavored that it makes the brand-name stuff look like RuPaul. (No blender involved there: Simmer and strain.)

We stocked up on popsicle molds at IKEA and got some fun star-shaped ones. The blueberry-lime recipe Gourmet published a year ago is my absolute favorite, but I've also made an awful lot of watermelon/kiwi/whatever's-on-hand versions. And for our 4th of July gathering, I filled the freezer with these. Think chocolate needs a lot of butterfat to be intense? So wrong. My only quibble is that the raspberry layers froze much harder than the chocolate layers, and that made unmolding and eating a little tricky.

But my petite glaciere is calling to me... once we've finished the last of the popsicles, it will be time to dust it off.

Since Epicurious seems to have misplaced the sublime ice pops recipe, here it is:

Blueberry-lime ice pops

3 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (not thawed)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup fresh lime juice

Simmer blueberries, sugar, and water, stirring occasionally until the berries burst, 3 to 5 minutes. Puree with lime juice until smooth. Poor into molds and freeze. Voila!