I am personally quite surprised that I have not made popsicles since 2022, nor have I worked with mamey sapote since 2020! It has been a minute since I last utilized my popsicle molds, and since I wanted to make a mamey dessert, it just all fell into place to make these mamey popsicles! In terms of flavor profile, mamey is a fruit in the same family(sapote) as persimmon. When unripe, they are dry, acrid, and starchy, but when ripe, they taste like a very sweet papaya and a boiled sweet potato had a baby – think sweet, buttery, but a little pulpy and fibrous. I personally love pairing mamey with Thai tea, since it adds in a lot of spices and a fragrance that plays off of the mild mamey flavor(and it also helps that both are orange so adding that will not mar the color of either ingredient). Since mamey are usually only available in the summer(and hard to find unless you go to a Latin supermarket), making them into ice pops, in the spirit of Mexican fruit-based paletas, is a way to enjoy your mamey in a refreshing, light way. My main recommendations are far as making this recipe is making sure that your mamey is actually ripe. If it is firm when you press into the exterior of it with your fingers, it is not ready yet. When the unpeeled fruit feels soft and squishy, kind of like a wet cardboard box, then you are good to go. I made the mistake years ago with attempting to cut and use an unripe mamey fruit – I broke a knife, which should have been my indicator to stop, and when my stubborn self finally processed the fruit to make an ice cream out of it, because the mamey was so unripe, it tasted astringent, dry, and just sucked the moisture out of your mouth despite being a frozen liquid. So be sure to use ripe mamey when making these! If the fruit feels firm, let it sit out a couple of days(I purchased my mamey on a Thursday and by Sunday it was perfect to use) just so that it gets softer. Soft mamey makes for gorgeously silky popsicles.

For this recipe, I actually got almost 40oz of mamey pulp from just one fruit. If you do not get that much yield from the mamey you purchased, please scale down the recipe – this will be easier than trying to purchase and ripen more mamey to get to that 37oz number. The hardest part of this recipe would be the wait. You have to wait for your mamey to ripe, as I spoke about in the first paragraph, but you also need to let the ice pops freeze, which can take at least 2 hours, depending on your freezer. I did expedite the freezing process on my ice pops to just 1 hour by churning the popsicles in an ice cream maker(this also makes pouring and filling the molds easier since you are working with a solid that won’t spill out the sides of the popsicle molds), but you can totally skip this process too if you do not own an ice cream machine. Besides that, the entire rest of this recipe hinges on you owning a blender. If you do not own a blender, get one. It can be a tabletop blender or an immersion blender, but you need that to break down the mamey into a puree. This is essential since even just trying to whip the fruit with a whisk will still result in the fibers of the mamey being left intact, which can eat very unpleasantly, almost like having a hair ball in your ice pops. So again, this recipe boils down to four steps: wait for the mamey to be ripe, blend everything together, fill your ice pop molds, and freeze them sufficiently(at least 2 hours). This is honestly as easy as it gets in regards to a recipe on my blog, and the end result speaks for itself!

Makes 12 popsicles:
37oz ripe mamey pulp
4oz heavy cream
2oz Thai tea powder with sugar and milk
a pinch of salt

In a blender, puree everything together until smooth and combined. Alternatively, place everything in a bowl and using an immersion blender, puree everything that way. Transfer the mamey puree into popsicle molds and freeze for at least 2 hours before attempting to unmold and serve.