I have to admit, it’s been a little too warm to cook these days, and I’ve been trying to avoid using the stove—the tiny kitchen in my apartment just gets too hot sometimes. So I thought it might be time for some MediterrAsian Un-Cooking…who doesn’t like a frozen treat to beat the summer heat?
I’m used to the heat, from past years spent in Taiwan—when I was a child, my dad moved our family from the U.S. to Taipei. While my Taiwanese-born parents were excited to show their homeland to me and my brother, there were definitely times when we were less than thrilled by our new surroundings, the local cuisine, and the tropical heat (Hey, we were kids!). So what’s the universal way to cheer up a kid AND deal with the weather, no matter where you are in the world? Hand them an ice cream!
However, ice cream in Taiwan wasn’t quite the same thing as it was back in the States. Well meaning relatives would kindly offer us foods that they thought would make us feel more “at home,” but while these foods took familar Western forms, such as sandwiches or ice cream, they would often turn out to have distinctly Asian flavors, such as red bean. Of course, now you can find red bean or taro ice cream at any Asian restaurant, but to a transplanted American kid used to a scoop of chocolate chip or Rocky Road, it was a shocker to get a bean popsicle. But kids adjust, and I grew to love red bean desserts. Now, I see them as a taste of nostalgia.
So when one of my cousins mentioned making delicious homemade red bean popsicles recently, I had to chuckle and I had to get the recipe. My cousin’s family loves them and they are a breeze to make…hope you enjoy them too!
(Note: My cousin’s recipe uses canned sweet red beans, which you can easily find at most Asian markets, but you can really add any ingredient or fruit that you prefer to the mix. I decided to use some fresh mango in some of my popsicles, for a bit of tropical flavor…we used to get wonderful mangoes from the open air markets in Taiwan. Also, the original recipe uses coconut cream rather than coconut milk, but coconut milk may be easier to find and works just as well. Just experiment and have fun!)
Coconut-Longan Popsicles
Recipe from my cousin Leng and her family (Lisa and Ananda)…thanks!
(Makes 8 servings)
Ingredients:
- 1 can longan (dragon eye fruit) or lychee fruit (about 20 oz.)
- 1 can coconut milk (about 14 oz.)
- Sweet adzuki red beans (canned)
- A ripe mango, peeled, pitted and diced
Equipment:
- Blender
- Popsicle molds
Directions:
Drain the liquid from the canned longan. Set aside a few pieces of the longan (4 or 5, depending on fruit size and your best judgment) and combine the rest of the fruit with the coconut milk in a blender. Blend until smooth, or leave some small pieces of fruit for texture. Dice the reserved longan and divide evenly among the popsicle molds. Add a heaping teaspoon of sweet red beans or mango to each mold, then pour the coconut milk-longan mixture over each until filled to the top. Give each popsicle a quick stir to evenly distribute the ingredients. Add additional beans or mango to taste, or to even out the level of liquid in the molds. Freeze until set, and enjoy!
10 Comments
I can’t wait to try this recipe out!
Time to get out the blender, Amy! Hope you like the recipe.
You’ve actually got me craving bean popsicles — and I never thought that would happen! As soon as the weather starts warming up around here we’ll be making up a batch of these, that’s for sure.
These really turned out tasty! I’m lucky enough to be able to share the results by living with Emily
The light coconut / longan flavor works so well with the stronger flavor of the red bean (my favorite) and the mango (ok, another fave too lol). It’s very refreshing to not only have the usual very sweet style of popsicle.
Your recipe reminds me of a sweet treat I enjoyed as a kid during hot, sticky Australian summers. We mixed passionfruit pulp with sweetened condensed milk and froze the mixture in ice cube trays — deliciously refreshing! Roll on summer downunder so I can make these divine sounding popsicles.
Ric: Hope that warm weather comes soon! I guess you’re still in bean soup weather, not bean popsicle weather.
Well, the recipe will still be there when that time comes around!
Robert: I’m glad you thought the popsicles were good…will be experimenting with other fun flavor combinations soon! The possibilities are endless.
Trudy: Ooh, I absolutely love the sound of the passionfruit frozen treat! I am going to have to try that sometime, as well as some passionfruit versions of these popsicles, maybe?
Hey Emily, I remember being horrified when our relatives first offered me the local version of popsicles on my first trip back to Taiwan. I vaguely remember thinking the taro popsicles were chocolate or something, heh heh.
We’ll definitely have to try the mango variation — yum. We tried pina-colada popsicles recently, but they didn’t come out quite right — fresh pineapple wasn’t sweet enough, and the coconut cream wasn’t as good w/o the blended longan. (BTW, we actually used coconut CREAM instead of coconut milk — it made them really creamy.)
Trudy, sweetened condensed milk in a popsicle sounds WONDERFUL. We’ll have to try that too. My daughter is crazy for popsicles right now.
Hey Leng, thanks for stopping by and of course, thanks for the recipe inspiration!
I think a lot of Taiwanese American kids have similar stories…if I had a dollar for every time I heard a childhood “visiting the relatives” story that ended with “…but then it was filled with RED BEAN!” I’d have a nice little bundle. 
I’ll add a note to the post to say the original recipe used coconut cream (that sounds really decadent!) but it actually did work really well with the coconut milk, which was still really creamy tasting and may be easier to find for some people anyway (I just got mine at Whole Foods…they have regular and light versions).
Let me know if you end up perfecting that pina colada popsicle! I agree that Trudy’s condensed milk recipe sounds awesome…I bet a popsicle based on one of those Vietnamese/Thai iced coffees would be incredible (though I wouldn’t give one to a kid…they’d be bouncing off the walls, ha ha).
I remember my aunt bringing out red bean, green bean and peanut popsicles. I thought the peanut ones were best.
Our local Vietnamese restaurant serves a smoothie blended from frozen strawberries, condensed milk, and ice. I bet that would be good in popsicle form too!
Hi Maggie! I was trying to remember what the green beans were…I recall having them in a sweet chilled dessert “soup” and probably also on top of shaved ice.
I love the sound of that smoothie…that would really be great in popsicle form.