Empanadas de Coco Yucatecas

These empanadas are from Yucatán. Not from generic Mexico, not from anywhere else in the south. The peninsula has its own pastry tradition, shaped by Spanish convents, Lebanese immigrants, and Maya cooks, and the empanadas de coco belong to that conversation.

The filling is fresh grated coconut cooked down with piloncillo, canela, and a strip of lime zest. Not the bagged sweetened coconut from the baking aisle. Coco fresco, cracked at home, grated by hand. The piloncillo is also non-negotiable. White sugar will give you something sweet but flat. Piloncillo gives you molasses, smoke, and the dark caramel notes that taste like the streets of Merida at four in the afternoon when the dulcerias open after siesta.

These empanadas show up at merienda, the late-afternoon sweet meal yucatecos take with coffee or chocolate. They also show up on the Hanal Pixan altar at the end of October and beginning of November, when families set out food for their dead. The empanada de coco is a guest on that altar because the dead loved coconut and because piloncillo and coconut were within reach for every household, rich or poor.

My mother did not make these. She was from Jalisco. But the woman who taught me, Dona Mercedes from Valladolid, made them with masa harina mixed into the flour. She said: 'El maiz no se va, ni siquiera en el pan dulce.' The corn does not leave, not even in the sweet bread. I have never made them without the masa since. Cada estado, su propia cocina.