It's summer time and the sun is out in full force. The temperature outside is rising and everyone is looking for a way to stay cool whether it's swimming in a pool, staying indoors in an air conditioned house or eating something cold.
The perfect cold treat to enjoy in the hot weather has got to be an ice pop. For Puerto Ricans, our version of an ice pop is called limber (when pronounced in Spanish it sounds like limbel). Limber is a frozen creamy pop made with cinnamon, vanilla, sugar, evaporated and condensed milk. My grandmother would make this summertime treat for me when I would go to her house during my summer vacation. She would add vanilla ice cream to her limber to make it extra sweet and creamy.
To make my non-dairy version, I knew I had to find some evaporated non-dairy milk that I could use as a substitute. At first I was going to evaporate my own soy milk to make evaporated soy milk but before I attempted to do that I decided to take a trip to my local Whole Foods store. I wanted to see if they had something I could use instead and they sure did. I found a can of evaporated coconut milk that I didn’t even know existed. I’ve looked in other supermarkets to see if they sold this and so far Whole Foods is the only store I can find it in. It’s low in sugar which is great because when I need to add the sugar to the limber mixture I want to be able to control how much goes in. I also found some culinary coconut milk which is used as a replacement for heavy dairy cream and in my case the condensed milk.
Once I gathered all of the ingredients it was time to make the liquid mixture. I put the soy milk, evaporated coconut milk, vanilla, cinnamon and sugar into a blender and blended it. After blending it is important to taste the mixture. It must taste sweeter than normal because when it freezes it loses some of the sweetness. If it doesn’t taste very sweet, then add more sugar.
Pour the mixture into ice pop molds or plastic cups if you don’t have ice pop molds and freeze overnight. Even though this recipe contains evaporated coconut milk and culinary coconut milk it doesn’t have a strong coconut taste. These frozen creamy limber pops are tasty and will keep you cool in the summer heat.
Non-Dairy Vanilla Creamsicle Pops (Puerto Rican Limber)
Get the printable recipe here.
Yield: 10 pops
Ingredients:
1 cup vanilla soymilk
½ cup culinary coconut milk
1 can evaporated coconut milk
2 tablespoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons organic cane sugar
Directions:
1. In a large bowl combine all of the ingredients and whisk together.
2. Before freezing the mixture taste it. It must taste sweeter than what you normally consider sweet because it loses some of its sweetness during the freezing process. Add more sugar if it doesn’t taste very sweet.
3. Pour mixture into ice pop mold and freeze overnight.
4. Enjoy frozen.
