Ice Ice Baby: Frozen Raspberries

Do you ever have something so small and insignificant that just hits you and sticks in your mind? For me it was in The Wedding Planner when J-Lo's character talks about the girl who stole her fiance and how she threw her a bridal shower and "even froze raspberries and mint leaves in the ice cubes." For some reason that just stuck with me as something that sounded so elegant and I always wanted to try it. Well recently I made a Raspberry Beer Cocktail and had some leftover frozen raspberries so when my ice tray was empty, I decided to give it a try! I put a frozen raspberry in each section of the ice tray and then filled the tray with water and placed it back in the freezer. I didn't happen to have any mint leaves lying around but I was just experimenting for fun, I'll save the mint leaves for later. The results weren't quite what I had expected but still interesting.

For starters, I always liked this idea because I thought that the raspberries frozen in ice would look very pretty. Maybe it was because I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh, but the end result looked more like something gory you would use for a Halloween party. The raspberries bled into the ice and looked like a bloody mess.

Even though the raspberry ice cubes didn't look pretty, I decided to see how they tasted. I plopped a few into a cup and poured a favorite drink of mine, Green Tea Ginger Ale, over the cubes. The result was very pleasant. While the Green Tea Ginger Ale is amazing on it's own, the raspberry ice cubes added a hint of raspberry flavoring which made it extra delicious.

So while frozen raspberries in ice didn't turn out quite as I expected, they still ended up being a pleasant surprise. The results not only gave me a great new idea for a Halloween party, they also ended up being a delicious way to add a little flavor to your favorite soda. Aside from Green Tea Ginger Ale, I see these adding nice flavor to regular Ginger Ale, lemon lime sodas like 7-Up, Sprite and Sierra Mist, Club Soda, Iced Tea, etc. This idea has also inspired me to start a series on my blog about ice cubes. I have always had a fascination with ice. I even picked ice as my theme for a poetry book once in middle school. I think there are a lot of creative ideas I can discover using an ice tray, water, and whatever I decide to freeze inside it next. Stay tuned...