Hand-made

Sugar, flour, lard and aromas: cinnamon from the old Ceylon for mantecados and almond and lemon for the polvorones. The rest are variations of a symphony of traditional flavors whose origin is lost in particular stoves and in time.

The origin of the tradition when sugar arrives in homes. "Up to the sixteenth century, a kind of cake was made in the houses with flour and lard, using flour from a type of wheat that is common in the area, with a lot of starch and little gluten, which was not used to make bread."

Sugar is added to this mass, which began to be present in the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century, introduced by the Arabs, who initially used it as a spice to perfume dishes. Columbus and the Portuguese take it to America and it is there where he lives his definitive hatch. In the sixteenth century, sugar is definitely incorporated into the diet of the elites and begins to be valued by the whole of society.

Ingredients

The traditional mass of mantecados and polvorones is the same. It contains flour, sugar and lard exclusively. To this mass are added the aromas, the cinnamon imported from Sri Lanka for the mantecados and the almond and the lemon for the polvorones. The mantecados are finally covered with a bit of sesame and the polvorones are added icing sugar, in powder, for their definitive presentation. There is no more.

It is true that there are variations of the traditional shortbread that have been incorporated over time into the catalog of the Estepeño sweets. These are achieved by incorporating cocoa, lemon, coconut or the corresponding nuances, which today are made from yogurt until the aromas are added.

The process

The first thing is to "toast" the flour. This drying process allows the wheat starch to unfold, which makes the final result more palatable to the palate. In parallel, butter, sugar and aromas are kneaded together, and the flour is incorporated into this dough, previously toasted and cooled for one or two days, and mixed well.

This mass is then passed to the "formadora", a machine that, as its name suggests, gives the final form to the mantecados.

The final process is the baked . The mantecados come out at 220 degrees from the oven and you have to let them cool to room temperature before proceeding to wrap them in tissue paper and introduce them in the containers for marketing