Car­ol Quash

They say bore­dom is the moth­er of in­ven­tion, and that there is al­ways room for dessert—per­haps the two say­ings that were the im­pe­tus be­hind the launch of the all-nat­ur­al, gourmet Pale­ta Re­pub­lic pop­si­cles.

Pale­ta’s hand­craft­ed pop­si­cles come in a va­ri­ety of flavours, in­clud­ing re­al fruit, creamy and yo­gurt pops. The fruit pops come in flavours such as pineap­ple, man­go, straw­ber­ry, pas­sion fruit, drag­on fruit, and peach­es.

“We al­so do like a trop­i­cal flavour, which is a blend, like a fruit punch. There’s al­so a berry blend we do as well, with some fresh lemons there,” Aaron Baksh ex­plained to WE Life and Cul­ture.

“So we have tart flavours as well, that are not over­ly sweet. You can say it’s ba­si­cal­ly like a nice smooth­ie on a stick.”

The creamy pops come in mocha, cof­fee, co­conut, and a va­ri­ety of blends, while the yo­gurt pops come in sev­er­al fruit flavours. All are avail­able in reg­u­lar sizes and min­is, and are mould­ed in­to dif­fer­ent shapes—one of the main at­trac­tions for chil­dren.

“Pale­ta Re­pub­lic was start­ed by my part­ner and her sis­ter dur­ing COVID time.” Ba­si­cal­ly, Baksh re­called, they had a lot of time on their hands, and they were crav­ing pop­si­cles.

The pop­si­cles, made with re­al fruits and sweet­ened with agave, were shared with their fam­i­ly and friends un­til peo­ple start­ed to buy them.

“Even­tu­al­ly, I came on board a cou­ple of years lat­er. And be­cause they couldn’t con­tin­ue their oblig­a­tions, I took over the op­er­a­tion.”

He said a pale­ta is the Mex­i­can ver­sion of a lol­ly or pop­si­cle. But un­like tra­di­tion­al store-bought pop­si­cles, it is made from fresh, nat­ur­al fruit and has no ar­ti­fi­cial syrups and dyes. They are there­fore health­i­er al­ter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al ice creams and oth­er desserts, and a de­li­cious way to help cope with the sti­fling heat.

“Mex­i­can pale­tas have fresh chunks of fruit, herbs, and spices, like how we make chow here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So it’s like a chow lol­ly. The agave sweet­en­ers are al­so na­tive to Mex­i­co, so it does bring a dif­fer­ent type of cul­ture, a dif­fer­ent flavour as well to our prod­ucts.”

But, he said, while the prod­ucts have no ar­ti­fi­cial flavours, he does use a sta­bilis­er to al­low for a longer freez­er life for them.

“We try to keep a very high qual­i­ty, so we use a sta­bilis­er that gives a shelf life of about three months. It could last longer, of course, but that is the range that we have been look­ing at.”

The man­u­fac­tur­ing and pack­ag­ing hap­pen at his fac­to­ry in Ari­ma.

“It is on a small scale as of right now. But we should be ex­pand­ing with­in the next year or so, and de­vel­op­ing more prod­ucts,” in­clud­ing ice cream and gela­to.

Be­cause the prod­uct de­pends heav­i­ly on fresh fruit, Aaron said he has to buy sea­son­al fruits in bulk and freeze them so he can have them avail­able through­out the year.

“Fruits like straw­ber­ries and pineap­ple are avail­able year-round. But I stock up on fruits like man­goes like crazy. Right now we are ful­ly stocked on man­goes, so we should be good to go till the next sea­son comes around.”

He said that 95 per cent of the time he us­es Julie man­goes be­cause they are eas­i­est to work with and have a nice flavour. Some­times he ex­per­i­ments with starch man­goes. He has even start­ed grow­ing a few oth­er fruits in an ef­fort to cut back on the cost of his raw ma­te­r­i­al, and in or­der to be able to main­tain his prices.

For more in­for­ma­tion, fol­low Pale­ta Re­pub­lic on Face­book and IG.

Stand-out Dish:

Pale­ta Recipe

In­gre­di­ents:

3 cups chopped fresh fruit (man­go, straw­ber­ries, or wa­ter­mel­on)

1/2 cup sug­ar, hon­ey or agave sweet­en­er

1/3 cup wa­ter or fruit juice

3 ta­ble­spoons fresh lime juice

Di­rec­tions:

Blend: Put half the fruit, sug­ar, wa­ter, and lime juice in a blender. Blend un­til smooth.

Fill: Put the rest of the chopped fruit in­to your ice pop moulds. Pour the blend­ed mix on top. Leave a small gap at the top for freez­ing.

Freeze: Put sticks in the moulds. Freeze for at least 6 hours un­til hard.