17 April

 Summertime and frozen desserts go hand in hand. When we were kids we were not aware of fancy names like frozen desserts. It was simple back then - either it was an ice cream if made form milk or it was a popsicle if made from water. In fact in those days the most popular ice lollies didn't come on sticks. It came in long thin tube like packets which we would call Pepsi. 

Pepsi didn't mean the competitor beverage brand of Coke. It was just multi cultured and flavored lollies in plastic pouches sold in ice cream carts on hot summer afternoons. Probably the simplest of concoctions but we kids loved it to the core. Adults would at times try to dissuade us from buying them stating that they were made of unhygienic water and could make us sick. Still it was hard to resist the lure of these frozen pops. 

The other frozen sensation was barf ka gola or Chuski which was shaved ice with lots of syrup and masala. While Pepsi was my favorite, my mom loved these barf ka golas. She would talk about her childhood and how they had grown up eating them in Bhagalpur. I found them too cold and icy as a kid. And especially since I always had a problem of sinus and pharyngitis, I avoided scarfing down all that ice at once.  Pepsis were more my pace and I loved them. Especially the orange flavored ones.

When I came to Mumbai, and I think we had went to visit the Juhu Chowpatty, after many years I tasted barf ka gola. It was of kalakhatta flavour, which is a mixture of tangy and sweet. Icy, sweet, dripping with a cola like syrup and served with a generous squeeze of lemon, the gola tasted out of the world. 

That experience had renewed my love for the ice golas. With time we started getting so many ice lollies by different brands and those pepsi lollies went out of fashion. But all the kids of my generation and before that would definitely still carry some of the fondest summer memories associated with them forever.

Last year I had planned on getting some pop moulds but the lockdown started and all the plans went into a limbo mode, so this year before time I got the popsicle mould and was well armed for summer days. As I wondered what I want to make as my first ever home made lolly, The first flavor that came to my mind was mojito. I am a huge huge fan of Mojito in general, virgin or not. 90 out of 100 times that would be my default order at any restaurant. One, because it tastes awesomely refreshing, and two, most important, you can rarely botch up a mojito! I did have instances where restaurants served the worst mojitos also, but those were very very rare.

For me it’s hard to think of anything more refreshing than a mojito. Lime, mint, sugar, rum together is by default a winning combination. So for my first pops, I decided to freeze it into lollies. The only thing that can be more refreshing than a mojito is a mojito popsicle. And boy was I corrrect! I went a step further in improvisation and sprinkled some chilli powder on the pops. And it turned into one of the super zingy pops I ever had. Check out the recipe below.

Preparation Time : 5 minutes