Fourth of July Shaved Ice - Darling Darleen

This post has been updated and originally posted for How Does She

With the Fourth of July in the near future, I wanted to share with you a healthy dessert we’ve been enjoying all summer long: Shaved Ice. I’ve put together some of my favorite syrup recipes to make it a Fourth of July shaved ice dessert. This fun and patriotic frozen treat will keep you cool after your barbecue, and it’s made with just ice and homemade fruit syrup. To keep it on the healthy side I used natural sweeteners, but if you’d like you can switch it out for white sugar cane. Either way, if you use fresh fruit you won’t have to use that much sweeteners.

Since we are celebrating the Independence Day, strawberries, bananas and blueberries are the perfect fruits to make red, white and blue syrup. And they also taste really yummy together too! Begin by cleaning and preparing your fruit. Also make sure you have a lot of ice on hand (depending on how many individual servings you need) and a really good blender (I used a blendtec) to shave the ice. A food processor would work too. Or if you’d like to spend the money, you can invest in a shave ice processor.

Make your syrups beforehand and store them in the fridge so they are nice and cold and won’t melt the ice too quickly. Shave your ice right before serving. The ice melts quickly, and you really can’t put them back into the freezer once the ice is shaved or it will become a big ice block.

Strawberry Syrup

2 cups of fresh strawberries (washed, sliced, cored)

1 cup water

1/3 cup Sweet Leaf Sugar Leaf (or less depending on how sweet you want it)

1 tsp. of lemon juice

Directions: Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for another 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring and mashing the strawberries. Remove from stove and turn off heat. Let it cool for about 5 minutes. Put a mesh strainer over a bowl and pour the syrup through the strainer to remove the strawberries. Using a spoon, press down on the strawberries so more juice gets release into the bowl. Store the syrup in a clean container and in the refrigerator.

Banana Coconut Syrup

2-3 peeled, over-ripened bananas

1 (14-ounce) can of coconut milk

Directions: Blend the ingredients together in a blender until completely smooth and creamy. Store in a clean container in the refrigerator.

Blueberry Syrup

1 pint of fresh blueberries (washed)

1/4 cup of water

1-2 tablespoons of honey (more if you want it sweeter)

1 tsp. of lemon juice

Directions: Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for another 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring and mashing the blueberries. Remove from stove and turn off heat. Let it cool for about 5 minutes. Put a mesh strainer over a bowl and pour the syrup through the strainer to remove the blueberries. Using a spoon, press down on the blueberries so more juice gets release into the bowl. Store the syrup in a clean container and in the refrigerator.

Now that you have all the syrups prepared, you are ready to make the shaved ice. Start out by putting 1 to 2 cups of ice in your blender or food processor and blend. Add a little bit of water (if needed) to help get the ice moving around. But if your blender is powerful, it should turn the ice to snow! Once you have blended the ice, you can use an ice cream scooper to serve it. Scoop shaved ice in chilled bowls. Pour syrups by layer starting with the blueberry syrup then banana coconut syrup and strawberry syrup.