Paletas are some of the most delicious frozen treats that can excite your palate and cool your body when it’s hot out. There are numerous varieties of paletas out there with different concoctions of ingredients and varying colors, tastes, and flavors.
These frozen treats vary depending on the ingredients used and their mode of preparation. The ingredients used may include fruits such as bananas, cucumbers, pineapples, strawberries, or mango, flowers such as hibiscus, spices such as chili and cinnamon, and alcoholic spirits such as tequila. Sometimes broken pieces of nuts and chocolate are also used. The ingredients and style of making your paletas are as many as you can imagine because making paletas is an art where imagination reigns.
Want to try making some paletas yourself? Here are a few tips and tricks that can help you make some delicious treats!
1. Smooth or chunky?
If you enjoy chunky paletas, then slice and muddle chocolate pieces with nuts and fresh pieces of fruits to get that chunky texture. If you like them smooth, then use a blending machine to make a fine puree. Then, sieve your puree to remove fruit pulp and seeds. Sieving your puree is recommendable when making fruit paletas, like strawberry paletas, or when working with any other seedy fruits.
2. Use a fun mold for your fruit paletas
If you don’t have special molds but want to make fun shapes, you can try the ingenious idea of using a cookie cutter to cut your fruits into fun shapes for more fun-looking fruit paletas. You can also use ice cube trays or mini plastic cups to get the more typical, geometric shapes. Alternatively, you may use a loaf pan and then cut the large chunks into desired small-sized pieces of paletas using a hot knife.
3. Prevent your paletas from losing their fruity aroma
Fruit paletas are often people’s favorites because of their fruity taste and aroma. If left in an open mold for long, these paletas may pick other flavors from the foods stored within the freezer. To prevent this problem, remove the paletas from the molding container and wrap them in plastic sheets and place them in a zip-top bag.
4. Neatness matters
Always use a pitcher with a proper spout when pouring your mixture of ingredients into the molds to avoid messes. When pouring the mixture, make sure that you leave a quarter of an inch of space from the top of the mold empty to cater for the expansion of the mixture once it freezes.
5. Are your fruit paletas stuck in the mold?
If your paletas get frozen and stuck in the mold, dip the bottom part of the mold into a bowl of hot water for 10 to 15 seconds. The heat from the water will defrost the paletas, and you can easily slide them off the mold.
6. Set your freezer to the right temperature
Your freezer should be set to the coldest setting to freeze you paletas quickly. The ideal temperature should be 0°F. Note that water can freeze at 32°F, but you’ll need to set colder temperature levels for mixtures with high sugar levels or alcohol to freeze.
7. Avoid messy after-treats
Drips from melting fruit paletas can leave your hands, floors, and other surfaces in your home sticky. To prevent these sticky messes, wrap cupcake liners on the bottom side of your paletas when you are ready to eat them. You have to slice a small slit at the center of the cupcake liner, which fits the size of the stick and drive the stick through it to catch all the drips.
The popularity of paletas is growing as quickly. The U.S. sells approximately 60, 000 metric tons of ice cream to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada each year. As the foreign ice cream market expands, the local U.S market of paletas and popsicles increase with the opening of more paleteria. Try these new hacks and tricks and find out why there are so many paletas, ice cream, and Popsicle lovers!