La Newyorkina’s Fany Gerson has already had a really good year, and now some further exciting news regarding her Popsicle brand comes sliding down the transom. Not too distant from the release of pastry book My Sweet Mexico (not to mention her company’s finalist status for the Next Big Small Brand), Gerson tells us she’ll release a second book, focused on frozen treats, this spring.
Paletas: Authentic Recipes for Mexican Ice Pops, Aguas Frescas & Shaved Ice is set to debut June 7, around the same time Gerson hopes to (drumroll) raise the shutters on her first brick-and-mortar space. While she had originally hoped to land in Manhattan, cost measures have driven her to look in Brooklyn. She envisions an outlet that’s “mostly a production space. The idea is to have a kitchen that produces things,” and figures it will have to be “more of a destination than a neighborhood spot.”
In conjunction with opening the store, Gerson is expanding her line to include ice creams and sorbets (and she’s already been selling aguas frescas at the New Amsterdam Market these past few months). The trained pastry chef hopes to experiment with unusual flavors like cajeta, a Mexican goat’s-milk caramel, and eventually wants to secure permits to add booze to her frozen concoctions. When we spoke today, she was off to her native Mexico, planning to attend an annual Popsicle festival there and return with authentic ingredients like mole, which will no doubt make their way into her desserts.
