Recipes with Julie Van Rosendaal: Cool treats for hot days

With record-breaking temperatures in the forecast this week, cooling treats are in order — fortunately, you can make your own slushies, popsicles and other frozen treats at home to ensure a constant supply in the coming days.

Slushies

Make your own by freezing juice, soda or lemonade in your ice cream machine, which will break up ice crystals as it freezes, creating a slushy consistency.

Or if you have a good blender, pulse ice with fresh or frozen watermelon chunks or other juicy fruit — add a splash of juice, water, soda, fizzy water or even sparkling wine to help it along, if needed.

A handful of fresh basil or mint from the garden goes very well with watermelon, citrus, berries … any fruit, really. And crushed ice blended with thawed juice concentrates makes for simple slushies, too. Buy the frozen containers you normally add water to, thaw and keep in the fridge, and add to ice in the blender to taste.

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If you don't have an ice cream machine or blender (or even if you do), you can use the Ziploc bag technique to make slushies (or frozen yogurt, or ice cream).

Half fill a large Ziploc bag with ice, shake over plenty of coarse salt (this creates a brine, and lowers the freezing point of water, so it gets very cold) and pop in a smaller sealed Ziploc baggie with juice, pop, yogurt, ice cream base or whatever you want to freeze.

Squeeze and move the bag around (you could even gently toss it) for 15-20 minutes, until the mixture is slushy. If you want it firmer, stick it in the freezer to firm up a bit.

Popsicles

You can freeze all kinds of juices, sodas, yogurt and fruit purees into a popsicle.

Puree fresh or frozen fruit, with a splash of water, juice, thawed juice concentrate or simple syrup (heat 1:1 sugar to water to dissolve, adding citrus zest, ginger or other flavours if you like, then chill) to help it along.

Freeze in popsicle moulds as is, or layer with full fat yogurt or coconut cream, sweetened with a spoonful or two of honey, for a tie-dyed effect.

Fiddlestix

These classic midway treats are simple to make at home without need for a popsicle mould.

Start with boxed ice cream, which you can slice and dip in a chocolate shell made with chopped chocolate or chocolate chips and coconut oil. Unlike plain melted chocolate, which is warm in its liquid state and will start to melt your ice cream on impact, the higher saturated fat level of coconut oil turns hard and snappy upon impact with something cold.

There are many recipes out there, with various ratios of chocolate to coconut oil, some with a drizzle of corn syrup to replace some of the sweetness that gets lost when you dilute chocolate with coconut oil, and to create a slightly fudgy texture. I went with one pound of chocolate to 200 g (about one cup) coconut oil and 125 g (a little more than half a cup) corn syrup.

Melt it together, open a box of ice cream and insert sticks, then cut between them into bars, dip the ice cream bars in chocolate and then into a shallow bowl of chopped salted peanuts, crunchy cereal, sprinkles or whatever else you can think of.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Ice Cream

Strawberries and rhubarb are a classic summer combo — and they're particularly fantastic in ice cream. This is a simple no-heat version that doesn't require eggs or cooking a custard base.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb strawberries (or raspberries) + rhubarb (about 3 cups total)
• ½-¾ cup sugar
• 1 cup heavy (whipping) cream
• 1 cup half & half cream

Directions:

Trim the berries (if necessary) and chop the rhubarb (it can be any ratio, I used just under a pound of berries and a couple small stalks of rhubarb) and put it into a medium saucepan with the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, mashing the mixture occasionally with a potato masher or fork, until the fruit breaks down and it gets jammy. Scrape into a bowl and refrigerate until well chilled.

Stir together the fruit and creams in a bowl. Freeze in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturers' directions.

Makes about 1 litre.