The Other Side of the Tortilla

pan dulce

Margarita-glazed doughnuts

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These margarita-glazed doughnuts are a fun recipe to impress your adult guests for breakfast or brunch—it’s like having a cocktail for breakfast without the buzz!

Margarita-glazed doughnuts from theothersideofthetortilla.com

If you’ve been a longtime reader, then you know we love biscuit doughnuts in our house! They’re super easy to make, and the icing only takes a few minutes to whisk together. A couple of bakeries in LA have a margarita-glazed doughnut that I really liked, so I thought I’d try making my own at home and these were pretty spectacular! The icing really does taste like a margarita….

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Guide to Mexican Pan Dulce

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Mexican pan dulce can encompass pastries, sweet breads and even cookies, and are typically purchased from a panadería, or bakery. Popular kinds of pan dulce that you’re probably familiar with may include varieties such as conchas, sweet empanadas, cuernos, and puerquitos or marranitos.

Guide to Mexican pan dulce from theothersideofthetortilla.com

Bread and pan dulce first came to be in Mexico after wheat was introduced to the country by the Spanish conquistadors in the early 16th Century. However, Mexican pan dulce as we know it today rose to popularity during the French occupation in the mid 1800s. French influence on Mexico’s gastronomy grew exponentially from the time Porfirio Díaz, a Francophile, took control as president in 1880 and flourished into the early 1900s. And although the French occupation of Mexico ended in the mid-1860s, they left behind an indelible impression when it came to Mexicans’ palate for sweet breads and baking techniques. French pastries and sweet breads adopted by Mexico morphed into uniquely Mexican creations, with a variety of shapes, textures and creative names—some of which still exist today. In fact, scholars estimate there may be as many as 2,000 different types of pan dulce in Mexico….

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Mexican chocolate-glazed doughnuts

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Try these Mexican chocolate-glazed doughnuts as a decadent treat you can serve to any crowd for breakfast or brunch.

How to make Mexican chocolate-glazed doughnuts with biscuit dough, recipe via theothersideofthetortilla.com

These biscuit doughnuts are incredibly easy to make, and the frosting is something you can whip up in a flash. Just keep a can of flaky biscuit dough in the refrigerator and you’ll be set for any breakfast. In fact, these are so easy, you can even make them on a weekday. Any pan dulce-lover will definitely be impressed by the familiar flavors….

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Easy Hibiscus-Glazed Doughnuts

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Impress everyone with this easy recipe for hibiscus-glazed doughnuts for breakfast. They look fancy but you won’t believe how quick they are to make!

Who doesn’t love doughnuts for breakfast? I don’t trust anyone who says they don’t. I first got the idea to make this doughnut recipe when Fany Gerson posted a photo on Instagram of a similar-looking doughnut she was making at her doughnut shop in Brooklyn—appropriately called Dough. If you’re not familiar with Fany, she’s one of my favorite people in the culinary world and she wrote a beautiful book called “My Sweet Mexico” in 2010 that has made me one of her biggest fans. As a lover of pan dulce and Mexican candies and desserts, her book was the first one I found that made these treasured recipes accessible in English.

How to make hibiscus glazed doughnuts with candied hibiscus flowers

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Wordless Wednesday: Finding a good concha

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If you’re a frequent reader, you know all about my deep love for pan dulce and all kinds of Mexican pastries and other baked goods. So, of course it was one of the first things I sought out during my first week living in Los Angeles. A good friend introduced me to this place and I can’t seem to stay away!

concha_pan_dulce_la_monarca_TOSOTT

This perfect concha is from La Monarca Bakery in Santa Monica (they have two more locations: Huntington Park and South Pasadena). I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this place soon, as I like to stop by there whenever I can since it’s not too far from where I work.

  • Is there a perfect piece of pan dulce in your neck of the woods? Let me know in the comments where you like to buy your pan dulce, wherever you  live!

GARIBALDI

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By now, you all know about my deeply rooted love for pan dulce, especially for a particular chochito-covered panque from El Globo called el garibaldi. In fact, El Globo is credited as the original maker of garibaldi, a little pound cake bathed in apricot jam and covered in white nonpareils. Many bakeries in Mexico try to emulate these little magical cakes, but nobody makes them quite like El Globo.

During our trips to Mexico City, we’ve always purchased them fresh to eat for breakfast. With a little café con leche, I can’t imagine a better way to start a day. On one occasion, we carefully wrapped a few to bring home with us to Chicago, but sadly they got slightly smashed in our carry-on luggage and from then on, we decided they didn’t travel well. And after eating garibaldi on countless visits to Mexico City, I returned from our most recent trip with a serious mission: to spend time in the test kitchen trying to recreate them so I wouldn’t have to wait until my next trip to Mexico to eat them. Looking at my calendar, five months is a long time – too long, if you ask me – to deny myself one of my favorite sweet treats….

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Wordless Wednesday: Garibaldi

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I’ve mentioned before my love for a bakery called El Globo – but by far my most favorite thing they sell are these precious little pastries called Garibaldi.

These little pound cakes, about the size of a muffin but without the top, are typically bathed in an apricot or raspberry marmalade and then rolled in white nonpareils (known as grageas in Spanish) for decoration. My favorite are the apricot-flavored.

Every time we visit, my suegra will pick up fresh Garibaldi for the day we want to eat them. They’re great as a breakfast pastry or a dessert and they’re the perfect treat because they aren’t gooey or sticky, the cake is perfectly moist and they’re not overly sweet.

I’m on a quest to learn how to make these at home this year because only being able to have them a few times a year is torture! I’ve dreamed about these little cakes and hopefully soon I’ll have a recipe to share here, or at least a comic tale of marmalade-coating-gone-wrong.

  • What’s your favorite Mexican pastry?