Dulces

For Mother's Day I got a new cookbook called "Dulce" by Joselius Flores that features "desserts in the Latin-American tradition." This book is awesome. It's full of desserts that remind me so much of my Abuela, and also of Miami in general. There's nothing like going to a Cuban bakery and having an Elena Ruz, a tres leches cake, or a pastelito de guayaba. Now, I am having fun trying out all of the recipes in this new book.


The first recipes I made were borrachitos con nieve de toronja y azafran (little drunken cakes with grapefruit-saffron sorbet). Borrachitos are usually made in baba molds, but I don't have any, so I made them in a mini muffin tin. They are a yeast bread that grow tall, and after they are baked you soak them overnight in a syrup. I soaked them in a tequila simple syrup. The sorbet was awesome. The saffron and grapefruit complimented each other in a surprising way.



The next three recipes I tried were for my niece's graduation party. I made Cocadas (Latin coconut bars), Suspiros de Chocolate (chocolate meringues), and Alfajores de Maizena (dulce-de-leche-filled butter cookie sandwiches). The coconut bars were good, but extremely gooey. I won't even tell you how many cups of sugar and coconut went into the recipe. They had a dark chocolate crust that was yummy. The chocolate meringues were light, slightly chewy in the middle, and tongue-melting. I garnished them with half a cashew slice. The dulce-de-leche butter cookie sandwiches were my favorite. The butter cookies were crisp and not too sweet, so they balanced the ultra-sweet dulce de leche. I edged them with finely grated unsweetened coconut. The one tricky thing about the dulce de leche recipe is that it takes a LONG time to cook. It cooked for almost five hours. And you have to babysit the sugar/milk mixture so that it is always simmering and doesn't boil too hot or burn. I think mine went slightly too far and started to get granulated, but it wasn't very noticeable, especially once spread on the cookies.



The most recent recipe I made was the Tres Leches recipe (three milks cake garnished with fresh mango). This recipe calls for 10 eggs that are whipped for about 12 minutes so that the volume triples. You then gently fold in the flour mixture into the eggs. I was so worried about losing the airiness of my eggs that I was overly gentle with my folding. It turned out that my flour didn't mix well and settled to the bottom, so that I had somewhat of a pie crust on the bottom of my cake. The top 2/3 of the cake was perfectly spongy though. After baking and cooling the cake, you punch holes with a toothpick all over and pour a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and whipping cream and let the cake soak it all up over night. This is a great dessert for adding pounds to your behind...thus the Cuban butt!

So far, I've enjoyed the recipes. Only two aspects of this book make it slightly less than perfect. One is that the measurements for ingredients, which are written both in weight and volume, aren't the most accurate. This means it's not the best book for a beginner. Since I know what cakes, cookies and yeast breads are supposed to look like, I was able to adjust my measurements. The other down side is that the recipes all require large quantities of dairy, eggs and sugar...making these a little pricier to make than other desserts (and a little more robust on the calories).

My next dulce: Barritas de Avena con Guayaba (oatmeal guava bars). I'm sure I'll give you the update soon.