Galletas Mestizas Yucatecas

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Wide mixing bowl
• •Wooden spoon or stand mixer
• •Fine-mesh sifter
• •Two sheet pans
• •Parchment paper
• •Thin metal spatula for moving fragile cookies

Instructions

1. 1

   Soften the manteca

   Pull the lard out an hour before you start. It should be soft enough to push your finger through but not greasy or melted. This is not butter. Lard behaves differently. If it is too cold, the dough cracks. If it is too warm, the cookies spread and lose the powdery crumb. La manteca es el sabor and it is also the structure. Treat it with respect.

   Use rendered pork lard from a Mexican carniceria or a butcher who renders his own. The vacuum-sealed white blocks at the supermarket are hydrogenated and have no flavor. They will give you a cookie that tastes like crayon.
2. 2

   Cream the lard and sugar

   In a wide bowl, beat the soft lard with the 3/4 cup powdered sugar until pale and fluffy, about three minutes by hand with a wooden spoon or two minutes with a stand mixer on medium. The mixture should look like wet sand turning into cream. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and salt. Beat another minute until smooth and the color lightens. This is the base of the cookie. Do not rush it.

3. 3

   Fold in the flour and canela

   Sift the flour and the teaspoon of canela directly over the lard mixture. Fold with a spatula or your hands until the dough just comes together. It should feel dry, sandy, almost too crumbly. That is correct. If it absolutely will not hold when you press it, add a tablespoon of milk, then another only if needed. Yucatecan polvorones are dry by design. The crumble in the mouth is the whole point.

   Use Mexican canela, the soft bark from Sri Lanka that Mexico has imported since the colonial era. Not cassia. Cassia is harsh and one-note. Canela is floral and sweet and it is the cinnamon Yucatecan cooks have always used.
4. 4

   Rest the dough

   Press the dough into a flat disc, wrap it, and refrigerate for 20 minutes. This lets the flour hydrate and the lard firm back up. Skip the rest and the cookies will spread and crack at the edges. Twenty minutes. No me vengas con atajos.

5. 5

   Shape the cookies

   Heat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 Celsius). Line two sheet pans with parchment. Pinch off pieces of dough the size of a walnut, about a tablespoon each. Roll each piece between your palms into a smooth ball, then flatten gently with your thumb into a thick disc about half an inch tall. Do not press too thin. The cookie should look stout. The women in Merida who taught me these shaped them by feel, never with a cutter, and every cookie looked a little different. That is part of the dish.

6. 6

   Bake until pale gold

   Arrange the discs about an inch apart on the prepared pans. Bake one tray at a time on the center rack for 16 to 20 minutes. The cookies are ready when the bottoms are pale gold and the tops are barely set, still nearly white. Do not let them brown. A Yucatecan polvoron is pale, dry, and tender. A browned polvoron is a sugar cookie pretending to be something it is not.

   The cookies will look underbaked when you pull them out. They are not. They finish setting as they cool. If you wait for them to look done in the oven, you have already overbaked them.
7. 7

   Cool, then dredge

   Let the cookies rest on the pan for ten minutes. They are extremely fragile while hot and will fall apart if you move them. Once they have firmed up, lift them carefully with a thin spatula. Whisk the remaining cup of powdered sugar with the tablespoon of canela in a shallow bowl. Roll each cooled cookie in the sugar mixture until completely coated. Set on a plate and dust the tops with a second pass of the sugar. Asi se hace y punto.

8. 8

   Serve at la merienda

   Pile them on a Yucatecan slipware plate and serve in the late afternoon with cafe de olla or a glass of cold horchata. The cookies should crumble against the roof of the mouth and leave a dusting of canela sugar on the lips. They keep for a week in a tin, and they get better after a day. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Source the lard from a Mexican carniceria. Ask for manteca casera, the freshly rendered kind, white and soft and faintly porky. The hydrogenated bricks at the supermarket are not the same ingredient and will give you a flat, waxy cookie.
• •Mexican vanilla from Papantla, Veracruz, is the right vanilla for this. Real extract, not the cheap imitation sold to tourists with coumarin in it. If you only have a high-quality vanilla from elsewhere, use it. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Do not skip the second dredging in canela sugar. The first coat melts slightly into the warm cookie. The second coat is what sits on top and dusts your fingers when you pick one up. That visual snow of canela sugar is the signature of a polvoron yucateco.

Advance Preparation

• •The dough can be made one day ahead and refrigerated, wrapped tightly. Let it sit at room temperature for 20 minutes before shaping so it is workable.
• •Baked cookies keep in an airtight tin at room temperature for one week. The canela sugar deepens in flavor after a day, and these are arguably better on day two than the day they are baked.
• •Shaped, unbaked discs freeze well on a sheet pan. Once frozen solid, transfer to a bag and bake straight from the freezer, adding 3 to 4 minutes to the baking time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 22g)