Homemade Mini Ice Creams and Lollies

I'd love to have an ice cream maker but I have a very small freezer that's always full to the brim, so when I saw the theme for this month's We Should Cocoa was ice cream, I thought I probably wouldn't be able to take part. Then I saw this ice pop maker in 99p Stores - I'd come across them before but they are usually quite big and again I wasn't sure they would fit in my freezer. I'm also not a fan of ice lollies so hadn't bought one until now - but since this was only 99p I thought it was worth giving it a try! The lollies it makes are very small - about three inches long - so it's easier to fit in your freezer if you haven't got a lot of space.

As it's We Should Cocoa, the ice creams had to involve chocolate. As I was making such a small amount I wasn't worried about trying to find a specific recipe, and instead I melted some white chocolate and mixed it with milk.

I then added some chopped chilli from a jar (Very Lazy brand) as I have seen recipes for white chocolate and chilli ice cream before and thought it looked interesting. I spooned it into a couple of the lolly moulds.

I thought I would try another flavour at the same time and make an ice lolly rather than an ice cream. I love Whittards instant teas, served cold in summer, and I had this summer cocktail flavour.

I made some up and poured it into the other lolly moulds- and then found that three of them each had a tiny hole in the bottom that made the liquid run straight out! That was quite annoying but I guess if you buy cheap, you get cheap!

I put the moulds in the freezer for a couple of hours and was pleased to find they came out easily. Here's my white chocolate and chilli ice cream:

And here you can see the summer cocktail iced tea flavour ice lolly as well.

These tasted good and I was pleased with the way they turned out, so I would consider investing in a better lolly maker in future.

I'm sending these to We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog and Chele at Chocolate Teapot.