Paletas have been called “Mexican popsicles” or “frozen fruit bars.” The name “paleta” itself means “blade” or “stick.” Many paleterias (places that sell paletas) have “Michoacana” in their names, and it’s believed that paletas were first sold in the state of Michoacán in western Mexico or in Mexico City in the 1940s. In 1997, the franchise La Paletera was started in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Paletas can be milk-based (such as vanilla, chocolate, and coconut flavors) or water-based (such as mango, pineapple, and tamarind flavors).
Wikipedia: Paleta
A paleta is a Mexican ice pop usually made from fresh fruit. The name comes from palo, or “stick,” and the diminutive ending -eta, referencing the little flat stick frozen into each item; the stores, carts, and kiosks where they are sold are known as paleterías, and the sellers are called paleteros.
Paleta flavors
Paleta flavors can be divided in two categories: milk-based and water-based.
Milk-based flavors are creamy in texture and traditionally include vanilla, chocolate, rum, coconut, pecan/walnut (nuez), and arroz con leche, which is a type of rice pudding. Water-based flavors include strawberry, mango, lime, cucumber, dill pickle, jamaica, cantaloupe, pineapple, guava, and tamarind. They are made from juices and sometimes include bits of frozen fruit. Although most flavors are sweetened with sugar, some are not, such as pepino con chile y limón (spicy cucumber with lime).
Paletas in United States
While paletas have been sold as a street food in Hispanic-American communities in the United States for many years, the last decade has seen a growth in U.S.-based brands and marketing. The California-based company Palapa Azul was created in 2002 specifically to develop paletas for a wider market of non-Hispanic consumers as well as the traditional customer base; the company introduced its products at the NASFT Fancy Food Show in January 2004 and received heavy national press coverage. One company, Helados Mexico, that began as a pushcart vendor in 1991, now sells its paletas in mainstream chains such as Wal-Mart.
Another famous paleteria in the United States is Las Paletas in Nashville. The small shop owned by two sisters has been featured in numerous publications and has recently been filmed by the Food Network.
Diana’s Desserts
Paletas (Mexican Popsicles) in Diana’s Recipe Book
Comments:
In Mexico almost every child grows up eating Paletas, frozen fruit bars, popsicles made from fresh seasonal fruit. The fruit is sometimes blended with milk or cream to create paletas de leche, or milk Popsicles, and sometimes it’s just puréed with sugar. These are known as paletas de agua, or water Popsicles. Traditional popular flavors include watermelon, cantaloupe, lime, strawberry, and chocolate. Part of the allure of paletas over regular American Popsicles is the fresh-fruit flavors.
Besides the paletas mixtures I offer below, try making a variation of your own. The options are almost endless.
Notes:
The paletas that contain milk are slightly creamy; the others are icy. Use frozen fruit bar molds (popsicle molds) with a 1/4 to 1/3-cup capacity; they’re sold in many cookware and hardware stores and through some cookware catalogs.
La Paletera
Fruit Bars (Paletas)
Long a popular and delicious treat in Mexico, La Paletera has now made these treats familiar to huge new markets on North America. These delicious frozen fruit bars are made from 100% natural ingredients, making them a healthy and tasty snack alternative. Our paletas come in a medley of unique flavors, including banana, coconut, mango, lime, strawberry, pecan, cookies-n-cream and leche quemada. Sugar-free fruit bars are also available.
La Paletera - Our Menu
WATER-BASED PALETAS
Blue Bubbe Gum
Cantaloupe
Chamoy
Coconut
Lemon
Lime
Mango
Mango with Chili
Margarita
Pineapple
Strawberry
Tamarindo
Watermelon
CREAM-BASED PALETAS
Banana
Banana Nut
Chocolate
Coconut
Cookies and Cream
Fresas Con Crema
Leche Quemada
Mango
Pecan
Pina Colada
Pistachio
Rice
Strawberry
Strawberry-Banana
Strawberry Cheesecake
Vanilla
(Oxford English Dictionary)
paleta, n.
Chiefly U.S.
[
A type of ice lolly made with fruit, of Mexican origin.
1957 M. S. EDMONSON et al. Synoptic Stud. Mexican Culture ii. 99 Ice cream is sold in Santiago and some of the larger villages, along with fruit-flavoured ice, and the never-ending supply of paletas, the Mexican counterpart of the American ‘popsicle’.
1985 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 21 July IX. 1/1 Manhattan Fruit Bars..sells paletas or frozen fruit bars to the pushcart operators.
1994 Austin (Texas) Amer.-Statesman (Nexis) 30 June, Socorro Luna, who originally is from Monterrey, Mexico, and lives in East Austin, said she buys paletas because they remind her of home.
Google Books
The Two Uncles of Pablo
by Harry Behn
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace
1959
Pg. 45:
A man walked by under the trees, singing out that he had paletas to sell, and Pablo forgot that he was lonely.
Google Books
Mexico Today
by John Armstrong Crow
New York, NY: Harper & Row
1972
Pg. 170:
I do see the hot-dog man doing a rush business, and the seller of paletas (Mexican popsicles), who has his little cart parked near the popular hot dogs,
1 August 1984, Kerrville (TX) Mountain Sun, pg. 3 ad:
TROPI-COOL
paletas
4-count pkg. 1.00
3 April 1985, Kerrville (TX) Mountain Sun, pg. 3 ad:
TROPI-COOL PALETAS
assorted varieties
(except coconut)
frozen 4-count pkg. 1.29
24 March 1988, Los Angeles (CA) Times, Ventura County - section 9, pg. 1:
On Sundays, they dress up their two young daughters in frilly dresses and take them to the market for some musical entertainment and a paleta, a Mexican Popsicle.
Austin (TX) Chronicle (September 12, 2003)
The Michoacana Connection
Paletas on the streets of Austin, paletas on the streets of Mexico
BY CLAUDIA ALARCÓN
Like every Mexican child, I grew up eating my fair share of paletas, Popsicles made from fresh seasonal fruits. The fruit is sometimes blended with milk or cream to create paletas de leche, or milk Popsicles, and sometimes it’s just puréed with sugar. These are known as paletas de agua, or water Popsicles. Traditional popular flavors include watermelon, cantaloupe, lime, strawberry, and chocolate.
I had wondered for a long time why almost every paletería (Popsicle store) in Mexico was named “La Michoacana.” Michoacana is a toponym, meaning someone or something from the state of Michoacán in western Mexico. But the name is used in virtually every state of the country, and it is not because it’s a national chain. In one very small town in the Huasteca region of Veracruz, I counted six paleterías named La Michoacana within a three-square-block area. Curiosity got the best of me, so I did some research.
I found there are different stories regarding its origin. One goes back to 1964, when a family of ice-cream makers from the small city of Tocumbo, Michoacán, came to the United States seeking a better life. They saved their money and returned to Mexico, expanding their ice-cream business and industrializing paleta-making. Another story claims that in 1932 Agustín Andrade, also a native of Tocumbo, traveled to Mexico City, where he worked for some time at a paletería and later opened his own business, La Michoacana. Later, he returned to Tocumbo, where many other people, mostly agricultural workers, saw in his success a new opportunity for prosperity.
Back then, nobody thought about copyrighting the name, and therefore even the smallest towns in Mexico have a “Paletería La Michoacana.” These days, people have copyrighted names like “La Michoacana Natural,” “La Nueva Michoacana,” and “La Real Michoacana.” And now, the story seems to be repeating itself here in River City with La Super Michoacana.
(...)
In 1996, he (Adolfo Alvarado—ed.) moved his family to Austin, leaving his son in Gilroy to oversee operations at the original Super Michoacana. In Austin, his business has grown to employ his wife and daughters, as well as a few other employees, to make 16 all-natural flavors of paletas during the warm-weather season. Part of the allure of paletas over regular American Popsicles is the fresh-fruit flavors. Most of the clientele are Mexican nationals or their American-born children, who enjoy tasting traditional flavors that remind them of home. “The most popular flavor by far is coconut,” says Alvarado. “We sell twice as many coconut paletas as any other flavor.”
There are other very interesting flavors available, however. My personal favorite is pepino con chile, a refreshing combination of fresh cucumber and watermelon, seasoned with a good dose of fresh lime juice and a bit of powdered chile piquín. The result is tangy, sweet, and a little savory, my favorite combination of flavors. If that sounds too exotic, try arroz. The best way to describe this is as frozen rice pudding on a stick, complete with cinnamon and raisins. Think of it as frozen horchata. And on a hot day, nothing beats the tropical flavor of tamarind, a tangy and thirst-quenching treat. There are also creamy paletas de leche, like guava, pecan, and piña colada, and light and refreshing paletas de agua, like mango, lime, and pineapple, among other unique flavors.
New York (NY) Times
Cold Comfort On a Stick
By RANDY ARCHIBOLD
Published: May 16, 2004
REMEMBER now, it is just ice cream.
But it is easy to forgive Frankie Fernandez if he thinks a blend of fresh fruit, milk and sugar frozen onto a stick could be much more in the hands of Gerardo Rodriguez.
Sweet potato. Pumpkin. Strawberry with plantain—those flavors seem traditional compared with others like chongos, cactus pear, rice pudding, guava and more found at La Flor de Michoacan, a Mexican ice pop shop, or paleteria, at 215 Union Avenue in the heart of this city’s growing Mexican immigrant community.
Mr. Fernandez stood overwhelmed one recent morning by the array of 60-odd choices, most of them tropical fruits, all made on the premises in the tradition popularized in the Mexican state of Michoacan decades ago. Would it be avocado? Papaya? Or cherimoya, a fruit popular in Mexico but uncommon here? Today’s answer turned out to be cherimoya.
’‘I feel like I want another one but I just can’t do it because I’ll get too heavy,’’ Mr. Fernandez, a carpenter, said as he bit into heaven. ‘‘You get addicted to it.’’
Mr. Rodriguez looked on, beaming, at another satisfied customer, and there are many.
On hot days he has sold more than 1,000 paletas—some milk-based, some-water based, many chunky with fruit—at his storefront shop, which on warm afternoons and evenings overflows with customers paying $1.75 for the creamy ones and $1.50 for the icy kind.
They come from all over, some even from Connecticut, the Bronx and Manhattan, to sample a newfound treat, in the case of the growing number of non-Latinos visiting the shop, or, for Mexican immigrants and other Latinos, a taste of home.
What Mr. Rodriguez and his brother Juan have brought here—they opened a paleteria on South Broadway in Yonkers called La Michoacana two years ago—is a Mexican sensation.
In Mexico, it is difficult to find a city that does not have at least one La Michoacana or La Flor de Michoacana or La Flor de Tocumbo, after the small village in Michoacan that gave birth to the fruit-pocked paleta in the 1940’s and now greets visitors at its gates with a towering pink monument in the shape of a Popsicle.
Paleterias in Mexico trace their roots to two cousins from the village who set up shop in Mexico City in 1946 with much success, and were copied by legions of other villagers and their progeny.
Houston (TX) Press
Best Popsicles
Published: September 23, 2004
La Paletera Picture a Dreamsicle made with fresh fruit and real cream, and you can begin to imagine what La Paletera’s Mexican popsicles taste like. Except they call them paletas, and they only have one stick. Unlike American popsicle makers, La Paletera never uses artificial flavorings or frozen fruit pulp. There are 47 flavors available every day, the most popular being coconut, strawberry and banana; there are also more exotic varieties too, like mango and chile. Fruit cups and fruit salads are available, and each boat-shaped bowl of fruit comes with your choice of chile powder or a hot-and-sour chile dipping sauce. The Fulton location is a franchise of the original La Paletera in Corpus Christi. Amy Salazar, who started the company with money she saved as a crop worker, grew up selling popsicles and aguas frescas at her parents’ palatería in Guadalajara, Mexico. Today, she’s selling more than popsicles; she is also selling popsicle-stand franchises.
New York (NY) Times
QUICK BITE: Port Chester; Handmade Ice Pops, In Extra Cool
By EMILY DENITTO
Published: August 27, 2006
Refreshment often comes in frozen form during hot months, but the treats at Palenteria Fernandez are so good, you’ll want to enjoy them all year long.
The Port Chester shop offers Mexican-style ice pops, handmade on the premises from a longtime family recipe of the owner, Ignacio Fernandez. The pops are something like a traditional frozen fruit bar, but these contain only fresh ingredients with no artificial sweeteners or additives.
(...)
Palenteria Fernandez, 33 North Main Street, Port Chester; (914) 939-3694. EMILY DeNITTO
Dallas Food
Mexican on Jefferson: Paleteria La Mexicana
Posted on Tuesday, July 17 2007 @ 20:22:05 PDT
Topic: Mexican
Paletas, for those who may not have encountered them (at least not under that name), are water- or milk/cream-based frozen desserts on sticks. Paleteria la Mexicana is one of the largest producers of paletas in Dallas.
(Trademark)
Word Mark PALETA
Translations THE TERM “PALETA” IS A SPANISH WORD MEANING “LOLLIPOP”
Goods and Services (CANCELLED) IC 042. US 101. G & S: DISTRIBUTORSHIP SERVICES IN THE FIELD OF FROZEN FOOD PRODUCTS. FIRST USE: 19840101. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19840101
Mark Drawing Code (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code 26.11.27 - Oblongs not used as carriers for words, letters or designs
Serial Number 73469044
Filing Date March 7, 1984
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Supplemental Register Date January 17, 1985
Registration Number 1329125
Registration Date April 2, 1985
Owner (REGISTRANT) PALETA INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION CORPORATION NEW YORK 38 HALL STREET BROOKLYN NEW YORK 11205
Attorney of Record KUHN AND MULLER
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register SUPPLEMENTAL
Affidavit Text SECT 8 (6-YR).
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD
Cancellation Date January 7, 2006
(Trademark)
Word Mark FIESTA PALETA
Translations THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE WORD “PALETA” IN THE MARK IS “STICK”.
Goods and Services (CANCELLED) IC 030. US 046. G & S: FROZEN CONFECTIONS. FIRST USE: 19850320. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19850320
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 73547835
Filing Date July 15, 1985
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition March 11, 1986
Registration Number 1427656
Registration Date February 3, 1987
Owner (REGISTRANT) SOUTHLAND CORPORATION, THE CORPORATION TEXAS 2828 NORTH HASKELL AVENUE DALLAS TEXAS 75221
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record JAMES L. DOOLEY
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD
Cancellation Date August 9, 1993
(Trademark)
Word Mark LA PALETERA
Goods and Services IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Restaurant services limited to restaurant services featuring fruits, fruit-based beverages and dairy-based beverages. FIRST USE: 19970408. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19970408
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 75903792
Filing Date January 27, 2000
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition January 8, 2002
Registration Number 2601934
Registration Date July 30, 2002
Owner (REGISTRANT) Salazar, Emerita INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES 5021 Kostotyz Road Corpus Christi TEXAS 78415
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record Mark H. Miller
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
(Trademark)
Word Mark MEXICO HELADOS PALETAS
Translations The foreign wording in the mark translates into English as HELADOS is English for ICE CREAMS. The English translation of “PALETAS” is “novelty food on a stick”.
Goods and Services IC 030. US 046. G & S: Ice cream and frozen confections; ice cream bars; ice cream filled cups; frozen custards; and frozen yogurts. FIRST USE: 20041201. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20041201
Mark Drawing Code (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code 03.01.04 - Cats, domestic Cats; Kittens
03.01.16 - Heads of cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, tigers
03.01.24 - Stylized cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, tigers
12.01.25 - Carts, serving; Dividers, room; Etageres (shelves); Lecterns; Lockers; Lockers, wall; Magazine racks; Mantels (fireplace); Pens, play; Playpens; Racks, (wall mounted); Racks, magazine; Room dividers; Screens, room divider; Serving carts; Spice racks; Vanities; Vanities (bedroom); Wine rack
22.03.02 - More than one bell
22.03.24 - Bells, hand; Hand bells; Single bells
26.13.02 - Plain single or multiple line quadrilaterals; Quadrilaterals (single line or multiple line)
26.13.21 - Quadrilaterals that are completely or partially shaded
26.13.25 - Quadrilaterals with one or more curved sides
Trademark Search Facility Classification Code ART-12.01 Furniture
ART-22.03 Bells
GROT-ANI Exaggerated depiction of an animal
SHAPES-BAR-BANDS Designs with bar, bands or lines
SHAPES-COLORS-3-OR-MORE Design listing or lined for three or more colors
SHAPES-GEOMETRIC Geometric figures and solids including squares, rectangles, quadrilaterals and polygons
Serial Number 78637083
Filing Date May 25, 2005
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition December 25, 2007
Registration Number 3394830
Registration Date March 11, 2008
Owner (REGISTRANT) Tropicale Foods, Inc. CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 12290 Colony Avenue Chino CALIFORNIA 91710
Attorney of Record Ian K. Boyd
Prior Registrations 2958976
Disclaimer NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE “MEXICO” AND “HELADOS” AND “PALETAS” APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN
Description of Mark The color(s) blue, yellow, red, white and black is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of the term “MEXICO” appearing in the colors blue, yellow and white; the term “HELADOS” appears in the color blue; the cart design appears in shades of the color blue with three bells in blue and yellow against a white background on the handle portion of the cart; the bear design on the front of the cart appears in shades of blue, with black and white eyes, and a red tongue; the term “PALETAS” appears in the color blue with a yellow background surrounding the letters.
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE