Barstool: Making boozy summer Popsicles

By the time we were ready to go buy ingredients at the grocery store, I’d lost interest in all my social media newsfeeds and sent her a GIF of Alec Baldwin in “30 Rock” saying, “I’m bored.”

My girlfriend Kacie had taken forever to find five links to boozy Popsicle recipes in the bowels of her Pinterest account, a website I’m told is perfect for saving such things but that always appears to be more of a time-suck than any of its contemporaries. In the end, we went with the first two she found anyway, one of which didn’t exactly count as a recipe — add lemonade to rosé and throw in some blueberries just because.

We were much more interested in the jalapeño, cucumber & lime concoction, though it almost lost out to a gin-and-ginger recipe with cucumber because the former didn’t spell out a liquor pairing. But the pepper heat appealed to us, and we agreed on tequila as a rational addition.

Credit belongs to a website called the Black Peppercorn for the recipe basics, but we improvised from there. Kacie and I doubled the jalapeños (making it two for six Popsicles) and almost doubled the lime while subbing out regular, larger cucumbers for the English cukes it suggested. Here’s what else we did.

Peel the cucumber — but we decided to leave a little skin just for color. Core the peppers and take out the white piths and seeds — honestly, it still wasn’t too hot and you could leave the piths in. Saving some of both, put the jalapeños and cucumber in a blender, adding a little water to ease the process. Our recipe called for a juicer and suggested straining the juice out of the smooth mush, but we ignored that, too. Instead we squeezed 1¾ limes into the mix, stirred in 1/3 cup of sugar and added a shot of tequila blanco to the mix.

Then we minced the remaining jalapeños and cut the leftover cucumber into thin rounds — really just for visual effect in the finished product — and froze the Popsicles. It’s easy to find molds for around $1 at places like Walmart. You can swap out the tequila blanco — I tasted three tequilas we had at home and somewhat arbitrarily determined this un-aged variety would be best. A second shot of booze wouldn’t hurt. And you could add more jalapeños too, even if you’re looking for mild heat.

Four hours later, sitting in our inflatable backyard pool, Kacie and I were pretty self-satisfied as we tried our creation.

The rosé variety tasted just fine, even after we’d enhanced it with pink lemonade instead of the more tart normal option and thrown raspberries in for good measure. Honestly, half the reason we picked it stemmed from the fact that a bottle of rosé already sat in our refrigerator.

There’s plenty of summer left — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — and if neither of these recipes strike you, don’t let that stop you. It’s one of the easiest ways to impress yourself or your friends, and boozy Popsicles are a perfect way to deal with this persistent heat.