What kid doesn’t like pudding right?!

Heck… what PERSON doesn’t like pudding?! I love it!

So, last week the kids and I had our first go at making homemade pudding pops.

At my house there are far more fans of Vanilla than Chocolate, but we mixed up a batch of both flavors to experiment with.

And for this activity the Vanilla is certainly much more fun to work with because…

You can add food coloring to it and make all kinds of fun colors.

Except for purple.

See that cup in the bottom right hand corner?

That was supposed to be purple, but no matter what ratio of blue and red food coloring I tried, I just couldn’t get the shade I was striving for. I guess because of the original yellowy base, the end result stayed far more in the realm of a weird taupe brown color, than a purple.

Oh well.

I’m not a huge fan of purple anyway.

It would have nicely completed our rainbow of colors though.

Next time I might try this with a White Chocolate pudding so I can start with a white base.

Anyhow… moving on…

My original intent was to make beautiful stripey pudding pops like this which I’ve seen on a few different websites and blogs.

This one was intended to be patriotic, but again… no white pudding.

Because of the lack of white in this one, it actually reminds me more of Dr. Seuss than our flag.

Which is fine… I like Dr. Suess.

I like him A LOT.

(I just watched Dumb and Dumber on TV last night. I totally said that statement in my head as I typed it, just like Jim Carey… in case you care.)

The Rainbow Pop.

See now in this picture the purple does actually look purple.

Not too bad.

This is cute, but it really is trickier than it looks to create these lines.

It takes a very steady purposeful hand not to drip and slop and accidentally ding your spoon against the insides of the cup.

This was my 8 year old son’s effort to make a rainbow pop.

It really is pretty tricky and it takes more patience and focus than you plan for as you begin.

This one would have looked really cool if we had swirled it a little with a toothpick and gave it more of a tie-dyed look.

And instead of topping his with purple, he went for a stripe of chocolate.

Good decision.

It turns out that Vanilla pudding pops are not as delicious as Vanilla pudding. The taste gets a bit dull when frozen and really needs some chocolate with it to make it worth eating. In fact I recommend a lot more chocolate mixed in to each pop than just the stripe seen above.

But that’s also just my adult opinion.

The kids could care less.

They loved these things.

But kids taste buds and food interests are weird. Anything bright and colorful and sweet excites them. My kids like to eat ice cream cones topped with magical marshmallows.

When we try this again I think I’ll do it with food coloring and Vanilla Ice Cream instead of pudding. We already know how good ice cream tastes frozen.

So after we realized how tricky creating smooth lines was, the rest of the pops went something more like this.

Little bit of this, little bit of that, glob here, splat there, spoonful of some more here.

The kids didn’t care about the stripes. They just loved all the colors and getting to play with their food.

We all really had a lot of fun doing this together.

And you’ll notice once again, I do let my kids get messy with food… but I demand it takes place outside.

That’s just how I roll.

We had a variety.

Popped in the sticks…

Put a cookie sheet full of pops in the freezer…

And the next day there was a fun fight about who got to eat my perfect looking rainbow one.

For more amazing, fun, creative popsicle ideas, you and your kids can enjoy this summer, and for years to come, check out this neat popsicle book.

And tell me…

How has your summer been going?

What kind of fun have you and your family been having?

Please… link your Summer Family Fun posts below.

If you’re new, you can check out these guidelines first.

I can’t wait to see what everyone has been up to!

Linked to: I’m Lovin’ It Fridays @ TidyMom, Check Me Out Saturday, Weekend Wrap Up PartyCraft School Sunday

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