This is a refreshing adult summer treat, especially on a hot muggy day.

This will take a couple of days to put together because you have to soak the fruit in the alcohol and it takes longer to freeze, but it is well worth the wait.

Step 1: Tequila Pops

Assemble your tools and ingredients:

Freezer Safe Tray
Knife
Cutting Board
1 package plastic shot glasses
popsicle sticks or bamboo skewers
1 (10 ounce) jar maraschino cherries
1 (10 ounce) jar mandarin oranges
1 bottle grenadine
Tequilla
Triple Sec
Orange Juice

Your first step is to drain the maraschino cherries and mandarin oranges. Save the juices for another use or discard. Add Tequila to the jar of mandarin oranges, enough to cover the fruit. Add Triple Sec to the maraschino cherries, enough to cover the fruit. (Sorry, I didn't think to take a picture of this step). Place the jars in the refrigerator at least 24 hours to give the fruit time to absorb the alcohol.

Step 2:

Lay out your shot glasses on the tray. Cut the cherries in half and place a peice in each shot glass. Do the same for the oranges.

Step 3:

Fill cups 2/3 full with orange juice. I used Sunny D.

Step 4:

This is why I recommend a tray. It is much easier to put a tray in the freezer than to place the cups individually.

The length of time for this step depends upon your freezer. The first time I made these, the first freezing step took approximately 30 minutes. This time, it was a very hot humid day and my freezer does not perform well under those conditions. It took over 2 hours to get to the desired level of frozen. You want these mostly frozen, but not completely.

Step 5:

Remove from the freezer and place skewer in each partially frozen cup. If they are not frozen enough, the skewer will list to one side or the other. Not a big deal, but they look prettier if they are straight up and down.

You can use popsicle sticks if you prefer or even lollipop sticks. Since I was taking these to a party, I chose the skewers. Whatever you chose must be food grade. I almost bought the craft popsicle sticks at Walmart until I saw in the fine print that they were not food grade.

Step 6:

Fill the remaining space in the cups with Grenadine. A 12 ounce bottle was enough for 36 pops.

Place tray back in the freezer for a minimum of 12 hours. The longer the better.

Step 7:

The finished product. You may need to warm the cup a little bit in your hand to release the pop.

Be sure to let everyone know that these contain alcohol.

Note: The first time I made these, I used plastic test tubes that I got at a barstore and a rack to hold the tubes upright. I forgot to get the popsicle sticks, so I rushed to the grocery store and bought plastic coffee stirrers. The pops were a big hit, but the plastic sticks tended to pull from the pop, so most people waited until the pop was partially defrosted and half drank, half ate the pops.