I Tried the Frozen Pudding Pop Hack from Reddit (and I Get Why It Went Viral)

I have to admit: I’m not typically a person who gets super excited about viral food trends. But when I heard the words “frozen pudding pops,” my interest was piqued. One, we love pudding in my house and two, we love frozen popsicles. This was the best of both worlds.

Naturally, I assumed a frozen pudding pop involved making pudding and freezing it in popsicle molds. But when I took a look at the viral Reddit post, which has almost 4,000 “upvotes,” I quickly learned it was much more simple. You take an instant pudding cup, shove a spoon through the lid, and freeze it. That’s it! The easiest pudding pops there ever were.

• See the original post for vanilla popsicles at r/1200isplenty.

I first came across the hack on the subreddit r/1200isplenty, which is described as “a sub for recipes, memes, and support related to low-calorie diets, targeted at people who have low TDEEs” (total daily energy expenditure). This post specifically mentions using low-fat pudding for an “80 cal” popsicle, but I was uninterested in that particular selling point. To me, this hack is great purely because it’s a shortcut to a cool and creamy summer treat.

With that said, feel free to use any brand and any flavor of pudding cups you like: I used Jell-O Chocolate Pudding Snacks. After freezing until solid, my kids and I gave them a go — and they were a delight, once I figured out the best way to eat them.

I believe there are two types of popsicle eaters. There are impatient people like me, who tend to bite frozen pops, and then there are patient people who lick. This is a pudding pop for the latter. This is a popsicle of patience. If you bite the pudding pops, you will feel the crispy ice-y shards as you bite, which I didn’t find too pleasant. But if you are patient, and lick the popsicle as it melts, you will enjoy all the creaminess of the pudding pop, and the texture is so much better this way. Once I figured that part out, I enjoyed my pudding popsicle all the way to the end.

After trying this hack out for myself, I have a couple important tips for you.

1. Don’t just shove the spoon into the lid. Shoving the spoon can crumple the lid and make a mess. My recommendation is to take a paring knife and slice about an inch across the center of the lid.
2. Use a spoon with a smaller “bowl.” I tried several different spoons, and the smaller ones not only fit in the pudding cups better, but were also easier to eat the pudding pop off of.

Your turn: Have you tried making frozen pudding pops at home? Let us know in the comments!