Watercolor Pops: Painted Popsicles Recipe and DIY Party Hack

Remember the painted watermelon donuts I made a while back, by chance? Well, I was thinking about those again over the weekend, and this idea popped into my head…I should try that with popsicles.

Sort of.

At the very least, I thought it would be fun to give some edible watercolors a try again, so I did some experimenting and landed on these watercolor popsicles, in the end.

Before you start scratching you head, I should probably mention that this will take you all of 5 seconds to complete, so we’re not talking about creating a masterpiece on the side of a melting piece of ice.

It’s really just a super quick party trick that you can add to any frozen popsicle for a little extra color.

The edible paint is food coloring. But before I get into the painting part, here’s the limited ingredient recipe for lemonade and limeade popsicles that I used for these watercolor pops…

Ingredients (makes 12 popsicles):

1 fresh lime, 1 fresh lemon, 1 small fresh orange (optional), store-bought (or homemade) lemonade or limeade, food coloring (use drops NOT gel)

Supplies: 

food safe brush, popsicle mold (mine is from Amazon) and knife

How-To:

1. Slice up half of the lime, lemon, and orange, as thin as possible. You can cut them in half too

2. Add lime, lemon, and orange slices to the popsicle wells. A couple of slices in each is really all you need.

It’s more to add a pop of color than anything else.

This would also be a good way to distinguish between lemonade and limeade post, if you’re creating both kind of pops in one ten count mold, for example. Lime slices in the limeade popsicles and lemon slices in the lemonade pops.

3. Pour limeade or lemonade into the popsicle molds, over the fruit.

Then pop the mold into the freezer for 45 minutes before removing from the freezer momentarily, to add the popsicle sticks.

4. Freeze until hardened, which typically takes 3-4 hours. 

Once they’re ready to eat, run the mold under warm water for 15-20 second to easily them out.

5. Now for the painting!

Squeeze 1-2 drops of food coloring onto a paper plate.

Then dip your food safe brush into the food coloring and use it just like paint to add a watercolor look to the popsicles.

I just started at the bottom and painted upward from there, leaving some of the popsicle unpainted to create kind of a gradient or ombre look.

Once you’ve painted the popsicles, you can serve them up on a platter of ice OR place them back into the popsicle molds to refreeze, if you’d like. 

If you put them back in the molds to freeze, this will spread the color a bit more, just FYI.

I think kids especially would love these because of the crazy vibrant colors and the fact that it will probably turn their tongues the color or the food coloring paint for a few minutes.

Kids love that kind of stuff don’t they?

But I feel like this is a good one for adults too, especially for a colorful summer party (or even spring).

Concept, styling, and photography by Brittni Mehlhoff

Is it popsicle season yet, in your neck of the woods? 

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For more popsicle recipes like this one, click here.