Empanadas de Cajeta del Bajío

Guanajuato, in the Bajío, gives you these empanadas through Celaya, the city that made goat-milk cajeta part of its identity. This is not food from a single Mexico. It is wheat flour, manteca de cerdo, cajeta de leche de cabra, canela, and a pastry hand that knows when to stop working the dough.

Celaya's cajeta tastes like its geography: goat milk from a dry ranching region, sugar cooked down in copper cazos, and the patience of dulceros who know the color by eye. The pastry belongs to the home kitchen. Women in Bajío kitchens learned to make a dough that bakes flaky enough to break under your fingers but strong enough to hold a spoonful of cajeta without leaking all over the charola.

My mother was from Jalisco, not Guanajuato, but her notebook had one line from a Celaya neighbor: 'cajeta fría, or it escapes.' She was right. Chill the filling, work the lard into the flour, seal the edge like you mean it. If the cajeta is cow-milk dulce de leche, you've made a sweet empanada. You have not made this one. Así se hace y punto.