Horchata Popsicles Recipe – Paletas de Horchata

Hey hey! I’m very excited about this recipe! I love horchata and since it’s starting to warm up, what better way to enjoy than in a paleta! Paleta means popsicle in Spanish! Plus, these are a dairy free treat that will leave your taste buds wanting more!

I feel like Mexican style paletas are most famous for the men that usually sell them. Man, I have soooo many good memories of playing in my grandpa’s yard with my cousins and waiting for the Paletero (popsicle man) to come by! He would always come by pushing his ice cream cart and ringing his bell. We would all get super pumped!

We had a system down, someone flag him down and stay with him so he wouldn’t leave, and the rest of us would go inside and ask our parents for money. Whoever stayed with the paletero would ask someone to get money for him too lol. Usually most of the parents would want a paleta too, so they would also send a representative to select the flavors for people to choose from.

A paletero usually has paletas that are paletas de agua (popsicles with a water base) and paletas de leche (popsicles with a milk base). Bet you didn’t think you were going to get a Spanish lesson in this post lol. The paletas de leche were more like ice cream flavors and the paletas de agua were more like ice pops. Both had an assortment of flavors and they were sooooo good!

Making these horchata popsicles, brought back all those memories! This recipe is based off of our Horchata Recipe but I added coconut cream because I wanted them to taste a little creamier! These are also dairy free! So it’s like having a paleta de leche taste without the dairy leche. 😉

We also found these super cute ring pop molds!! I’ve never seen these before, but I found them at Target and just had to get them!

Horchata Popsicles

Makes 8 pops

Ingredients

• 1 cup rice
• 1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds
• 2 cinnamon sticks, broken up into pieces
• 1 cup almond milk
• 4 cups very warm water, plus 1 cup cold water
• 1 can coconut cream (13.6 oz can) **make sure it’s unsweeetened
• 4 tablespoons pure maple syrup , or more to taste (not pancake syrup)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Equipment

• • Measuring Cups and Spoons – I love my gold measuring cups!
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• • Mixing Bowls
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• • Blender – Our Ninja blender gets the job done every time
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• • Linen Cloth or Cheesecloth
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• • Ice Pop Molds or even these fun Ring Pops Silicone Molds – We used both of these and they were great
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• • Popsicle Sticks
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Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, soak the uncooked rice, almonds and cinnamon sticks in 4 cups of very warm water for 7-10 hours. **I actually only had time to soak them for 4 hours and they were still good, but you would get the most flavor out of them if you soaked them longer.
2. After they have fully soaked, drain the water in the sink and throw away half of the cinnamon stick pieces.
3. Pour the rice, almonds and remaining cinnamon sticks into the blender with the almond milk and blend on medium for about 5 minutes until the rice and almonds are completely pulverized.
4. Next, lay your linen cloth over your medium bowl and pour the blended mixture into the cloth.
5. Wring out the cloth making sure you extract all the smooth almond milk from the rice and almonds. This step could be a little tedious, but it’s also so important, so just be patient and get as much of the liquid out as you can, then discard what’s left in the cloth.
6. Whisk in your can of coconut cream, 1 cup of cold water, 4 tablespoons maple syrup and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.
7. Pour your liquid into the popsicle molds and put in the freezer.
8. At about the 1 or 2 hour mark, you can put your popsicles sticks into each mold.
9. Freeze for 4-6 hours, until firm.
10. Once they’re ready, let warm water run over the outside of the molds until the popsicle loosens from the edges. Enjoy!

If you would like to enjoy more Mexican recipe or dairy free goodness check out these recipes!