The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Desserts of the Spanish convents in Mexico

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The kitchen inside Puebla's Convento de Santa Rosa, where mole is thought to have been invented. Photo by Jesus Guzmán-Moya via Flickr

Spanish nuns arrived in Mexico in the 16th century. Over the next 300 years, they’d play a big role in shaping modern Mexican cuisine, creating dishes that combined both Spanish and indigenous ingredients. Several of the convent-era dishes are still eaten today, including mole, chiles en nogada, rompope and several other candies and desserts.

We’re studying desserts of the convents in cooking class right now, and it’s been eye-opening to learn what the nuns created. The ingredients are humble compared to what we’d use today. One simple biscuit called a tlaco combines pulque and lard. A stovetop pudding called manjar blanco calls for boiling chicken, grinding it until smooth, and then mixing it with sugar, ground rice and milk. (Everyone in the class hated that dessert. One student called, “Who wants a licuado de pollo?”) Wikipedia says the dessert came from Spain, but using ground rice as a thickening agent is an Arab technique.

Butter is rarely included in the convent desserts, or heavy cream. Both were too difficult to store and too expensive. You don’t see any chocolate either, except as a beverage to accompany a bread.

Ladling out bienmesabe, a pudding made from ground almonds, rice and coconut, mixed with milk and sugar

While I was impressed by the nuns’ ingenuity and resourcefulness — I personally loved the licuado de polla idea, even if the taste was a little odd — I was absolutely smitten with how the nuns named their creations. “Bienmesabe,” for instance, is a rice, coconut and almond pudding that means “tastes good to me.”

Ring-shaped cookies flavored with anise seed, dipped in piloncillo syrup and sprinkled with powdered sugar are “rosquetes impregnados del espíritu del anís.” (Rosquete cookies impregnated with the spirit of anise.) Last week we made “empanadas de la concepción,” or conception empanadas, flaky lard pockets filled with pastry cream.

I ate those for breakfast over three days, slicing off little slivers with a knife.



None of these desserts are things you can whip up at the last minute. Check out my notes for the rosquetes, which look so simple when they’re done.

I wanted to leave you with a recipe for bienmesabe, the creamy pudding that the nuns used to dust with cinnamon, stenciled in the shape of the Virgin Mary. But I didn’t write down all the cooking directions. (I was too busy with the rosquetes and their impregnated spirits.) Instead, here are a few other pictures of our convent desserts.

First are gaznates, or pastry tubes filled with meringue. I’d tried these on the street once and hated them. But fresh from the fryer, with homemade meringue whipped by hand like the nuns used to do — they were fantastic. I did the piping below:

And here are buñuelos, expertly fried by my classmate William. To make them, you must heat a long-handled mold (it looks like a cookie cutter stuck to the end of a rod) in hot oil, then dip it — not too much, or else the buñuelo won’t come out correctly — in a bowl of batter, and quickly remove the rod and the dough into the hot pan. I tried to make one and it came out kind of mangled.

Tonight we move on to savory convent foods. Can’t wait to see what the nuns came up with next.

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Comments

  1. I studied abroad in Spain, and remember how in my travel books, each city had highlighted a particular baked good, often prepared by the local convent, that was particular to that town. I suppose different convents are famous for different things in Mexico as well?

    As for the licuado de pollo, I remember reading about thsi in a turkish food guide–and I remember because it sounded so weird to me. The chicken was to be rinsed until it lost all traces of chicken flavor and then turned into a dessert. It piqued my curiosity as it did yours, but I don’t expect I’d like it very much. I guess it’s true, in some sense, that chicken is a “blank palate” though?

    • Hi Sara: Surprisingly, not necessarily. William (my classmate) read your comment and he said we used gallina, or hen, in our dessert. It has a much more concentrated chicken flavor than the normal “pollo.” I wasn’t aware of the difference, but if anyone else knows more about this, please feel free to elaborate.

      • Well maybe it’s bad factory chicken that has no flavor! I’ve had capon which is quite tasty. So it doesn’t seem impossible that gallina could be distinctive.

  2. You are quite the lucky girl to be able to study this history! How exciting to learn about these desserts and the amazing women who make them!

    I just recently saw an episode about nuns on the Oprah show and was so impressed with these women. I’m Catholic but really never knew what it was to be a nun. If you didn’t see the episode you should try and look for it online.

    I sit here reading your post as I’m eating a buñuelo and have just added a fun mold to my Christmas list 😉

  3. Lesley,

    I love to read about the country where I grew up, currently live and work through your “hungry” eyes. Your fascination and admiration of Mexico through it´s cuisine makes me appreciate even more all the things that I take for granted.

    Your buñuelo “expert” fryer classmate!

  4. Those bunuelos are the same as rosettes. We always had rosettes at Christmas and were told they were Scandinavian probably because there are lots of Scandinavians in the area. The irons come in different designs–bell, star, etc.

    I am discovering all these foods are universally connected and who knows who can lay claim to their origination.

    Your bunuelos are unlike the ones I have had at fiestas, the large-as-a-plate ones which don’t look like an iron or any metal form was used.

    • Hi Joan: Yes, all the other students in the class referred to the buñuelos as “tipo Bimbo,” or Bimbo-style. Bimbo is a big bread- and snack-cake manufacturer in Mexico. Most of the buñuelos I’ve seen on the street are the flat-disc variety too.

  6. Buñuelos de viento! Yummm! They are very popular here in Jalisco. We (my suegra, my sisters-in-law and I) make them for Nochebuena. A very special treat! 🙂 I always thought the molds looked like fancy potato mashers. 🙂

    • Thanks for sharing the name, Leslie! I think I would like a fancy potato-masher buñuelo mold for Christmas someday. (Just in case my husband happens to be reading this.)

  7. I just read your guest post at my “amiga” blog, Anamaris…She also had me as her guest. Now I can use my molcajete instead of having it as a decoration on my kitchen counter. I have travelled extensively throughout Mexico many years ago when I worked for the Mexican Tourist Office in New York under Miguel Aleman. Wondeful memories and mucha tequila. This post is particularly special to me because, some of my growing up years were spent in Spain and the mention of all the different pastries brought back memories of both countries, now my goal is to prepare some of them. I don’t know if you have read the blog http://whatscookingmexico.com/, but I think you will enjoy it. Looking forward to receiving your posts from now on. If you can e-mail me with a correct way to cure my molcajete, would appreciate it. Suerte y un placer.

  8. Hello,spanish-speaking people are near us , bu t for me ,
    the customs and their cultures are stil strange to me
    even I can communicate easily with them .Tha tis because
    spanish speaking people comprise may ethnics.

  9. Hey! the dessert, liquado de pollo, sounds a lot like a medieval dish called blacmange (“white food”). This dish uses boiled, shredded chicken, rice, sugar, rosewater, and almonds, among other things. Its not a dessert, but it does have a sweet, interesting taste. Blancmange is found in early medieval cooking books and maybe by the 16th century the dish had evolved from entree to dessert.

  10. Where in the world can I find the mold for the bunuelos? No seems to know what I am talking about! Or where to purchase it. I love the way they look like snowflakes!

    • In Mexico City, I’m pretty sure you can find them at the Merced Market. In the US, Amazon sells “rosette irons” — they look the same as buñuelo molds but they’re indented at the end. Those should work fine. Good luck!