Paletas
Fresh fruit blended with a little sugar and lime and frozen in moulds. Fifteen minutes of work and no cooking.
Photograph credit: IMG_0844 by Christina Xu · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
Chop a handful of the fruit and stir it in whole rather than blending everything smooth. Paletas de agua are meant to have pieces in them — that is what distinguishes them from a shop-bought ice lolly — and the chunks also break up the ice crystals so the texture is less solid. A spoonful of lime juice keeps the mango from tasting flat once frozen.
Questions About Paletas
How long does Paletas take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and of cooking, plus 6 hours of freezing, so allow 6 hours 15 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 8.
The Method for Paletas
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Warm the sugar and water together, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Cool completely.
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Cut about 150 g of the mango into 5 mm dice and set aside.
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Blend the remaining mango with the cooled syrup, lime juice and salt until completely smooth.
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Taste it: it should be slightly sweeter and sharper than you want, because freezing dulls both.
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Stir the diced mango through the purée.
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Sprinkle a pinch of Tajín into the bottom of each mould.
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Pour the mixture in, leaving 1 cm at the top for expansion.
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Freeze 1 hour, then push the sticks in upright.
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Freeze a further 5 hours, until solid.
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Dip the moulds in warm water for 15 seconds to release, and dust with more Tajín.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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A Few Pointers
- Season sweeter and sharper than tastes right — freezing dulls it.
- Chunks stirred in, not blended.
- Sticks in after an hour, when the mixture holds them upright.
Ingredient Swaps
- Lemon is the everyday swap for lime in this kind of dish — the acidity plays the same role even though the flavour is not identical.
Pairs Well With
A hot afternoon · Tajín · Fresh lime
Keeping and Reheating
Keeps 2 months frozen, wrapped.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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