Colación, a Christmas Mexican sweet

is a traditional Mexican sweet that is a must during the Christmas season. Piñatas cannot be conceived without their corresponding colación.

There are different sizes, shapes, flavors, textures, and colors . Some are round, others oval. They can be pink, yellow, green, blue, or white. They can be filled with orange, lemon, cinnamon, peanut, almond, nuts, and even hazelnut. All of them are covered in icing sugar or cornstarch . All of them are delicious.

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But, where does this traditional sweet come from? Its origin is uncertain; chronicler Guillermo Prieto t alks about it in Memoirs of My Time (1840-1853) : “For some time, Mrs. Urruchua, widow of Martínez del Campo, an honorable and corpulent merchant, shine in society by organizing very popular posadas in which they gave colación en valuable silver dishes.”

However, the most known version about the creation of this sweet is that of “ La Giralda .” In 1926 , Spanish Consuelo Anaya de Pérez and her husband Fernando Pérez García founded a company called “Hispano-Mexicana,” a small sweets factory. Back then, the elaboration of sweets was 100% artisanal and sales were small, nevertheless, they produced a wide variety of caramels.

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It was in the 1940s , thanks to the success of their products, that Consuelo and her husband renewed their company and thus “La Giralda” was born, a name chosen by Consuelo due to her admiration for southern Spain’s landscape and culture .

She had the idea of creating a sweet made from bran , which ended being a little bit hard but with good flavor and called it colación . This sweet became a success and since then, La Giralda is the leader of its elaboration.

Since then, colación became a part of Mexican celebrations and despite the incursion of other sweets, colación is still sold and filling Christmas parties with color.

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