Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

As a kid, I loved chomping on stalks of fresh rhubarb that I’d pick from the plant growing behind my family’s home in Indiana. Juicy and crisp, with bracing tartness from oxalic acid, rhubarb may technically be a vegetable, but it makes sense that it’s often treated more like fruit, simmered into jams and baked into pies. Combining rhubarb with sugar helps balance its sour punch, and lends notes of fresh strawberry (along with sharing the same growing season, it’s no wonder why the two are often paired together in desserts).For these bright and tart popsicles, I quickly simmer fresh rhubarb juice with sugar and a pinch of malic acid, before chilling the base and freezing it in molds. The sugar provides the pops with much-needed sweetness along with the perfect texture thanks to its ability to lower the freezing point of water. Malic acid, on the other hand, perks up the sour notes of rhubarb that can be slightly dulled by cooking, and preserves the bright color from anthocyanin pigments in the stalks. It’s important to note that I don’t use any salt in the base because it can bring out rhubarb’s vegetal aroma, a quality that we’re not looking to highlight here.The result: sweet, sour, fruity, and wildly refreshing popsicles that you’ll want to have at the ready all summer long.

Rhubarb Popsicles