Alfeñiques de Guanajuato

Guanajuato, in the Bajío, makes alfeñiques for Todos Santos and Día de Muertos, not as Halloween candy, even if the calendar confuses people outside Mexico. In the city, around Mercado Hidalgo and the old plazas, you see skulls, borreguitos, angels, and little fruit laid out on paper, all white sugar and bright icing, waiting for the altar.

This candy is cane sugar, clara de huevo, jugo de limón mexicano, and the hand of the dulcera. The paste has to be firm enough to take the mold and soft enough not to crack at the nose of the skull or the wing of the angel. The women who make them in Guanajuato read the air better than a thermometer. If the morning is damp, more azúcar glass. If the paste breaks, a touch more lemon on the fingers. No me vengas con atajos.

My mother did not make Guanajuato alfeñiques. She was from Jalisco. But in her notebook, beside a recipe for capirotada, she wrote one line from a woman she met near Mercado Hidalgo: el molde seco manda. The dry mold decides. She was right. A wet mold ruins the figure before you can blame the sugar.

Set them on a Talavera guanajuatense platón from Dolores Hidalgo, crowded together with cempasúchil and pan de muerto. This is altar work, not pastry-shop decoration. Cada estado, su propia cocina.