Bizcochos de Manteca Yucatecos

These are yucatecos. Not norteños, not poblanos, not the bizcochos you find in a Ciudad de México panaderia. Bizcochos de manteca belong to Mérida and to the small towns of the Yucatán peninsula, where the lard is the point and nobody has ever pretended otherwise.

There are two main lines of bizcocho in Yucatán. The bizcocho de agua, lighter, crisper, made with water and a thinner dough. And this one, the bizcocho de manteca, denser, crumblier, richer, the kind that holds together when you dip it in coffee and absorbs everything around it. The agua version is elegant. The manteca version is what the abuelas actually serve. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and within the state, each pastry has its own job.

The lard is non-negotiable. Butter changes the flavor and the crumb. Vegetable shortening leaves a coating on the roof of your mouth that no Yucatecan cook would tolerate. Manteca de cerdo, fresh and clean smelling, gives the bizcocho its short, tender crumb and its yucateco soul. La manteca es el sabor. If you cannot get good lard, render your own from pork fatback. It takes an afternoon and it will outlast a dozen pastries.

My mother did not make these. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco has its own panaderia tradition. But on my third trip to Mérida, a woman named Doña Edelmira at the Mercado Lucas de Galvez sold me a paper bag of bizcochos still warm and walked me back to her sister-in-law's house to show me how they were shaped. Her notebook page is now in mine. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.