snow cone

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Snow cone with cherry syrup

A snow cone is a paper cone filled with crushed ice topped with flavored sugar water. Due to the popularity of snowballs, many snow cones are now made like snowballs with shaven ice and a sugar syrup and the terms are often used interchangeably.

Similar confections

Kids with shave ice treat.

In Cuba and many Cuban neighborhoods, they are known as "granizados," after the Spanish word granizo for hailstones. In Miami neighborhoods, they are often sold in conjunction with other frozen confections in ice cream trucks and stands throughout the city. A classic Cuban flavoring for granizados is anise, made from extracts of the star anise spice.

Child enjoying a "Piragua" in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico and many Puerto Rican neighborhoods, they are named "Piragua", because they are made in pyramid shapes and agua means water in Spanish. Most Puerto Rican snow cone vendors use street snow cone carts instead of fixed stands or kiosks. During the summer months in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, especially in New York and Philadelphia, "piragua" carts are often found on the streets and attract many customers.

In Mexico, California, Texas and the Southwestern United States, a finely shaved and syruped ice is called a raspa, or raspado.^[1] Raspar is Spanish for "scrape"; hence raspado means, roughly, "scraped ice." Raspas come in a wide range of fruit flavors and classic Mexican flavors, such as leche (sweetened milk with cinnamon), picocito (lemon and chili powder), chamoy (fruits and chili sauce), cucumber, guanabana, guava, pistachio, tamarind, among others.

In the Dominican Republic and many Dominican neighborhoods, snow cones are called "frío frío" or sometimes "yun yun". "Frío" is the Spanish for "cold," and "yun" is an onomatopoeic term for the sound made when scraping a block of ice.

Snow cone vending truck in Arizona

Snow cones are sometimes confused with "Italian ices" or "water ices", but some water ice lovers distinguish between the two: As Eva Chen explained, snow cones are generally flavored after production, at the point of sale, whereas water ices are flavored as the ice is made.

In El Salvador and other countries of the Region, they are known as "Minutas"

In Peru they are known as "cremolada" and in some parts of the country as "raspadilla".

In Venezuela they are called Cepillados and are topped with condensed milk.

In South Asia, snow cones are enjoyed as a low-cost summer treat, often shaved by hand and served on a stick or a cup. In Pakistan it is often referred to as 'Gola ganda' (Urdu: گولا گنڈا) and in India as 'Chuski'. in Gujarati it's call "baraf no golo"

See also

Syrups used for Hawaiian shave ice

• Snowball - Ice shaved from a block that is fluffy, not granular
• Italian ice - Water ice
• Snow cream - A cream or snow and dairy based dessert
• Kakigori - Japanese shaved ice dessert
• Patbingsu - Korean shaved ice dessert
• Piragua - Puerto Rican frozen treat.
• Halo halo - Filipino shaved ice dessert
• Slush (beverage) - A shaved ice drink
• Slurpee / Slush Puppie - Brand name slushes
• Snow - Type of precipitation
• slushy - used for slang

References