Watermelon Fruit Bars

Sometime this summer I decided that the cost of healthy frozen treats was too much and I wanted to make my own. Since then I’ve been experimenting with making various fruit bars, creamsicles and other frozen treats in the popsicle family. I bought two different types of popsicle molds made by Tovolo: one was bar shaped and the other a twin popsicle mold. I’ve tried making frozen yogurt creamsicles. Final product was too hard. Mocha popsicles – super tasty. My most recent experimental was watermelon fruit bars.

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I got a bunch of watermelon in my CSA box in late July. I was eating it as quickly as I could but I couldn’t keep up. So I decide to puree some of it up and make fruit bars. I got the idea from a recipe I found for watermelon yogurt pops on the web. I however wanted a pure fruit bar. This actually worked really well and created a nice refreshing treat. My only complaint is one about texture. I want them to be more like the fruit bars from the store, less icy and more smooth. I think that this probably requires adding sugar or corn syrup, which defeats one of my purposes which was to make them healthier than the store bought ones. I THINK I can also get the texture I want if I use unflavored gelatin but I’m not sure exactly how to tweak the recipe.