Blackberry Cheesecake Popsicles
Today’s post is not for the faint of heart. You have been warned!
After blackberry picking at our friends’ neighborhood, we went home with 2 lbs of blackberries, proud of our hard work. As I was prepping to make delicious blackberry jam, I looked at the blackberries and was horrified to see a few worms.
I immediately googled “worms in blackberries” and went down a black hole. Unfortunately, blackberry worms are incredibly common, and almost all fresh blackberries have them. While I expect bugs and worms in wild berries, I found out you can even get them even at fruit from Costco, Trader Joes, and regular groceries.
The worms are are the larvae of fruit flies. They are safe to eat, won’t make you sick, and everyone has almost certainly eaten them at one point or another, but that doesn’t make it less disgusting in my opinion (on the plus side, extra protein!).
Fortunately, there is an easy way to get the worms out of your berries. Just wash them in ice and salt water, and the worms will come to the surface where you can rinse them away. Freezing or chilling the berries also gets the worms out (source). Rinse your berries afterwards, and you can enjoy them worm free!
While I have always been admittedly lazy about washing produce despite B nagging me about it, this incident has changed my mind very convincingly. Adapted from Imperial Sugar.
Blackberry Cheesecake Popsicles
Ingredients
1 cup blackberries
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 (8-ounce) package cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
Directions
Add blackberries and sugar to a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until blueberries start to release their juices and create a syrupy liquid. Remove from heat and cool.
In medium bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, yogurt, and almond milk in a large bowl until smooth.
Fill each ice pop mold with small spoonfuls of blueberry mixture and cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over top of each ice pop. Freeze for 4 hours or overnight. Serve frozen and enjoy!
Of note, my popsicle molds are smaller than standard size, so you may need to increase ratios.
