Paletas: Authentic Recipes for Mexican Ice Pops, Shaved Ice & Aguas Frescas [A Cookbook] Hardcover – June 7, 2011

I find that frozen dessert recipes are sometimes a real gamble. You usually need specialized equipment or molds, sometimes you have to make a custard, it's always a multi-step process that stretches over a 24-hour period, and the anticipation is high by the time you're able to eat the thing you've made. It's difficult for any recipe to deliver a good return on that kind of investment. But the recipes in this book definitely deliver, and then some.We've tried the raspberry hibiscus pops, the baked banana rum pops and the blackberry yogurt honey pops. All were straightforward to make, not too many steps, but with outstanding flavor in the finished product. You don't need a whole lot of one particular ingredient to get ten pops, so it's not a big financial investment, and generally the time involved is minimal - maybe 30 minutes in the kitchen overall, and a few hours waiting for the pops to freeze. When you consider the trouble one would go through to make ice cream or a granita, these recipes offer a much easier alternative for a frozen treat. So far, the trickiest part for me has been finding a flat spot in my pull-out freezer drawer for the popsicle mold. The author also allows for and recommends some alternative freezing molds in case you don't have an ice pop mold. Her recipes are creative, they use generally convenient ingredients (e.g. three ripe bananas or a whole cantaloupe), and again, not much work compared to some other recipes. We will be using this book again and again over the years, I think. I can't keep the pops in the house for more than two days. I store them in a zip-top bag after un-molding them. I think these recipes taste ten times better than what you can buy in a box in the store's freezer section. Looking forward to trying the aqua frescas section of the book next!I followed other reviewers' advice about when to put the sticks in, how to unmold, and how to store. The tips were very helpful and worked perfectly. The author gives the same advice for dealing with frozen molds, but it's not in big bold letters so you might miss it if you're not looking for it.

I have only made a couple of recipes from this book so far--the Hibiscus-Raspberry Ice Pop and the Jamaica Aguas Fresca (Hibiscus Iced Tea), but they have both been even better than I expected. I had purchased some hibiscus flowers to make the iced tea, and tried a different recipe I found on-line that called for half as many flowers, and steeping in the refrigerator. I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the final drink, went searching for a way to use up the hibiscus flowers, and remembered this cookbook. I was worried that the iced tea I had made was going to be too weak to work in a popsicle (as frozen items can seem less flavorful than they do when warm), so I followed her recipe for the ice pop which uses her hibiscus agua fresca recipe as a base. The final hibiscus drink was SO much better than the one I had made before--I have since made it twice more (in about a week and a half). The ice pop was fantastic too--although I only have six small popsicle molds (these moldsClearance Sale - Ozera Ice Popsicle Molds, Ice Pop Molds, Ice Pop Maker, Oval, Set of 6, Green which work great, by the way), and using her recipe as written meant that most of each mold was filled with raspberries. So the final ice pop tastes essentially like the most refreshing frozen raspberry ice pop you can imagine--which is not a complaint on any level--but I want to try again with half the amount of raspberries so that I can also taste the hibiscus this time.Anyway, if all of the other recipes are as great as this one (and they sound like they will be), I am looking forward to trying each and every one.

I have already tried straberry and cantalupe paletas, both were beyond great, everyone loved them, summer is comming and our freezer will certainly be packed with wonderful falvors for eveyone.Author talks about each recipe and instructions are very clear and easy to follow, plus the result is great.Really loved this book.UPDATE - June 2013.The more I continue to go through this book and try recipes the more I fall in love with it. By now I have also tried watermelon which was wonderful and very refreshing, lime which turned out a little sour but fascinating. I also made a variation for a "papaya" paleta wich has become one of my favorites. I also made a variation of the apricot-chamomile paleta using fresh peaches from a friend's garden and were really happy with the results. My last experiment was the Passion Fruit Cream pops, I love passion fruit but was not very enthusiastic about this paletas being cream, I even got skeptical while preparing them when I got to the part where 3 egg yolks were introduced but I must say the result was beyond wonderful this is by far the best passion fruit paleta I have ever had. I will still try a not creamy variation (hope it turns out as good as the creamy one). Now everyone in the family is asking which will be the next "experiment" and I have so much volunteers to try them they may have to take turns. What I like the most my most loyal follower is my almost 2 year old boy who not only asks for his paleta every afternoon but has become a really enthusiastic "sous chef".