Creative Ice Cubes | Family Economics

By Cathe

It’s almost summer and that means your freezer’s about to go into ice cube overdrive. Even if your fridge makes cubes automatically, it’s good to have a few standard ice cube trays on hand for frozen things other than water. Here are just some ideas:

•    Because there’s a lemon tree in the family, we often have more lemons than we can use before they all go bad. So just before that happens, we squeeze the juice from the remaining lemons into ice cube trays to freeze the juice. Once frozen they can be removed and placed together into a Ziploc® Brand freezer bag and replaced in the freezer for later use in recipes and drinks.

•    Freeze fruit juice for adding to sparkling water as a refreshing summer drink. Lemonade ice cubes are delicious when served with cold tea.

•    When uneaten bananas begin to brown, remove peel and smash the bananas into a bowl. Spoon the banana mash into ice cube trays and freeze. Then, as with the lemon juice, remove the frozen cubes and store the cubes all together in a Ziploc® Brand freezer bag in the freezer. Use frozen banana cubes for tossing into the blender when making fruit smoothies or thaw out at a later time for making homemade banana bread.

•    Freezing yogurt in cubes is also a great way to save money by buying your yogurt in larger volume. Use frozen yogurt cubes for smoothies as well and eliminate the need for ice to make your smoothie frosty which can also make it runny.

•    There’s nothing like iced coffee in the summer with actual coffee ice! Brew a pot of coffee, cool and pour into trays to freeze. Store cubes in bags in the freezer as mentioned above.

•    Edible flowers, herbs, small fruit pieces and berries make lovely party drink embellishments and spectacular punch bowl ornament. To make them, you may need to fill the trays only half full with water then place flowers or fruit into them. Once frozen, fill the remaining space with water. This will keep the items from floating to the top and more likely to stay placed in the middle of the cubes.

Do you have any fun ideas for summer ice cubes?