Indian Summer Paletas

By Marilyn Hunter

I love Indian summer in California. Just when everyone is getting ready for sweaters and football season, Californians are enjoying the remains of those warm summer days. These are heat wave days in L.A. with temperatures into the 100s. For those of us who don’t have a pool, we often turn to popsicles for relief. And keepin’ it real in L.A. means not just any popsicle, but a Mexican paleta.

If you’ve never visited a paletería, it’s time you did. Paletas are ice pops made from fresh fruit. They come in a wide variety of flavors from mango, pineapple and tamarind to arroz con leche and cucumber with chile y limón. I once read that if summer in L.A. had a flavor, it would be mango con chile.

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Strawberry Shortcake on a Stick

By Katie Barreira

Ripe summer berries always make me crave jammy, jewel-toned desserts like pies, cobblers and crisps. But it just seems cruel, for both cooks and eaters, to serve bubbling baked goods in this sizzling heat. The dilemma has inspired me to come up with frozen twists on some of my favorite oven-made treats.

This week, I had a hankering for late-season strawberry shortcake. So I took the traditional shortcake topping of sugar-sweetened strawberries, puréed it with rich, tangy Greek yogurt and poured it into popsicle molds. Then, to mimic the shortcake biscuits, I finely ground shortbread cookies for a crispy pop coating. The result was a hands-free and refreshing version of the original with all the intensity of flavor. These sticks totally hit the spot!

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