Reverse engineering a recipe

The Hispanic Fiesta Latin-American festival descends on Mel Lastman square in North York every labour day weekend.  The festival has lots of live music, a beer tent, and food vendors.  And every year, I buy a coconut ice pops (“Paletas”/popsicles) from Polar Real Tropical Fruit.  They’re awesome, and I never see them sold anywhere else.  Perhaps its the ambience of the festival, but I prefer them to other coconut ice pops I’ve tried.

So, I decided to try to make my own.  I took a picture of the ingredients and the nutritional information.

Then, looking at the protein, carbohydrate, and fat content of each key ingredients against the nutritional facts of the ice pop, I estimated the proportions of a 150 g serving as follows:

• 15 g of shredded, sweetened coconut
• 70 g of 2% milk
• 2 g of tapioca starch
• 13 g of sugar
• 50 g of water

Here’s how mine turned out:

It looks very much like the ones from Polar Real Tropical, but the texture was a little more ice-crystal-y, and it was less sweet.  For my next batch, I’ll cook the mixture before freezing it.  This should help the sugar dissolve evenly, and allow the tapioca starch to thicken the mixture a bit and improve texture.