in the kitchen: cookies 'n cream pudding pops

Here's something for all you Oreo fans out there.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this, but I think it's pretty tasty nonetheless.   A couple of weeks ago I made these mint-chocolate-oreo pudding pops from Our Best Bites, and they were SO good.  {Incidentally, the strawberries and cream pudding pops on that same site are unreal.  Give those a try too.  Trust me.}  My husband and I are both fans of cookies 'n cream ice cream, so I adapted the recipe to try to get that classic taste in a pudding pop.  And the finished product did not disappoint!

The Ingredients.

1 small (1.7 oz) box of instant vanilla pudding mix
1 and 3/4 cups of half-and-half
10 crushed Oreo cookies

The Method.

Pour the half-and-half in a blender, and then add the vanilla pudding mix.  Blend until combined, and then stir in the crushed Oreos.  Immediately pour into popsicle molds and freeze until set.  This recipe made 6 popsicles for me; it just depends on the size of your molds.

Helpful hints:  I found it definitely works better to put the half-and-half in the blender and THEN the pudding mix on top of that; if you put the pudding in first, some of it gets stuck in the bottom of the blender and doesn't get incorporated as well.  And, since we're working with instant pudding, the faster you get the mixture in the molds, the better, since after it actually becomes more "pudding-like" (is that a word?) it's harder to pour in there.  Also, you can also use milk instead of the half-and-half, but it won't make as creamy of a pudding pop.  I actually used fat-free half-and-half for these since that's what I had on hand, and it worked great, but the regular stuff might be even better.

Enjoy!  :o)

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