2 very different recipes for raspberry lollipops

You may remember a few days ago I headed up to my Nana's and we brought home buckets of raspberries (but if you can't you can read about it here). I've finally decided to make some raspberry lollipops out of my Homemade sweet shop book. Here is the recipe:

 Ingredients you will need:

• 300g of raspberries
• 400g of caster sugar
• Some oil for greasing

Equipment you will need:

• Lollipop sticks (we used 1/3 of a wooden kebab stick)
• Sugar thermometer *
• Weighing scale
• Bowl
• Baking sheet for greesing
• A large pan

* We didn't have a sugar thermometer (secretly hoping Luke is aware I'd love one for our anniversary next week) so we attempted to do the cold water test. For those of you who are thinking of doing this- don't! We must have wasted at least 2 batches this way. 

We actually halved this recipe as we only had 200g of caster sugar and it did make enough for maybe 8 lollies (although most of it is still stuck in the pan so please don't take my word for it.) Our lollies unfortunately didn't work out although annoyingly I took pictures of when we should have taken them out so use the pictures as a rough guide. 

Method (from the book in the picture)

1. Grease a baking sheet with the oil and prepare an ice-water bath.
2. Put the raspberries in a heavy pan and heat gently until the fruits soften and the juices run. Don't stir.

Strain through a sieve placed over a large bowl to catch the juices. Do not push the berries through the sieve as this will cause the juice to go cloudy (you can use the pulp as a cake filling).

Put the sugar in a heavy pan and and add the strained raspberry juice. Stir the mixture over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil. 

Stop stirring and boil over moderate heat until the syrup reaches the hard crack stage (154 degrees C.) There will be a lot of steam coming from the pan but don't worry- it means you're almost there!

Arrest the cooking by placing the pan in the ice water bath (make sure you don't leave it in too long as it begins to harden straight away.)

Pour spoonfuls of the syrup onto the prepared baking sheet, about 5cm apart. Press the lollipop sticks into the syrup, then pour another drop over the top of the stick to seal it in. 

 Allow the lollipops to cool completely before lifting gently from the sheet and wrapping them individually in cellophane to give as gifts or keep for yourself! 

As I mentioned earlier the first few attempts didn't go as planned but we got some awesome smoothie type ice lollies out of it. They are perfect as a cool summer breakfast! So here is raspberry lollipop recipe number 2. 

First we burnt the raspberries to the bottom of the pan as we didn't realise that the fruit wouldn't all turn to juice. So I added a good covering of milk to the pan so you could only just see some of the berries poking out. And scraped up as much berry juice as I could, (I also squashed a few berries as I didn't want too many bits in them) until they turned a dark purpley colour. Then its time for some sugar. In the end I added around 10 heaped teaspoons but it was still too tart for Mum's taste, so tasting as you go is essential. Pop them into molds and wait a good few minutes for them to be frozen enough to add the stick and freeze. Our mixture was already thick enough to stick a stick straight in. 

And there you have it! 2 delicious raspberry lolly summer recipes. Enjoy!

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