Pumpkin is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve used it to make some pumpkin butter, and cheated by using butternut squash to make a quick weeknight pasta.

Luc is able to eat solid foods now and teething in a major way, so I was inspired to make a round of pumpkin popsicles that he could enjoy with the rest of us because we have plans to ride the popsicle train well into fall! As for the paleo aspect of this treat, we aren’t paleo, and that was a complete surprise to me until I stumbled upon the info when trying to decide if I should drink the little bit of the mixture that didn’t fit in the molds or would that be crazy (answer : it’s not crazy, all the paleo folks are whipping up almost this exact mixture and calling it a smoothie).

Keeping a baby’s diet in mind, I wanted to make popsicles from simple, wholesome ingredients. Skipping refined sugar because he doesn’t need it and dairy products because they’re hard for his gentle stomach to digest.  Since a quick Google search for pumpkin popsicles will turn up a whole variety with some sort of dairy in them (from milk to condensed milk to yogurt), I had to get creative for this experiment.

In addition to canned pumpkin, I decided to use coconut milk for the creamy base and ripe bananas to sweeten the mix. Blending those ingredients together produced a mixture that was definitely creamy with a strong banana flavor and an undercurrent of something “green and fresh” (sometimes that’s how pumpkin tastes to me), but it needed something more. The recipe needed some spice. Rather than use cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, as the traditional compliments to pumpkin, I decided to throw in a dash of chai spices from my tea stash.

This blend is made up of cardamon, ginger, turmeric, saffron, and other spices. It’s called the karha, which is just the chai spices without any black tea. The spices are so delicious, and I learned from a woman at our market that I could just use this to make a caffeine-free chai, which is what I do as a special treat for Alex and me. On chilly afternoons we share a tea; he drinks his in his tiny Sleepytime mug while I have mine in my Morning Thunder mug. It’s the cutest thing, and that tangent is over.

I surprised the boys with a mid-morning popsicle treat, because these are healthy enough that you can eat them at any time of day! And then you’ll seal the deal as their favorite mom. The popsicles are packed with Vitamin C from both the banana and pumpkin. The banana also provides vitamin B-6 while the pumpkin provides vitamin A, and the coconut milk is just giving you plenty of good fats. So healthy that you definitely deserve the favorite mom title mug ;-).

As you can tell, the popsicles were a big hit! But I it’s worth mentioning that they’re a bit heavier than a popsicle made from fruit juice and water, as such, it might be hard to finish a big one in one sitting. This is where our tiny popsicles molds come in handy – finishing a two bite pop is no problem. In this sitting Alex finished about half of his big pop, so we just put the rest back in the holder for another day (another benefit of our favorite big popsicle molds).

Here’s to fall popsicle weather in Boulder!