Mazapán de Pepita Yucateco (Zapotitos)

This dulce is from Yucatán. Not from the central highlands, not from Puebla where the almond mazapán came over with the Spanish, but from Mérida and the surrounding towns where pumpkin seeds grew before sugar arrived and where the nuns of the Convento de la Concepción figured out, sometime in the 18th century, that pepita ground fine with sugar makes a marzipan that has nothing to envy of the European one. They called them zapotitos, little sapotes, because the women painted them to look like miniature tropical fruits.

The pepita is everything. Yucatecan pepita verde, the smooth hulled seed without the shell, raw and pale green. Toasted pepita makes pepitoria, the brown brittle candy of the mercado, and that is a different sweet. For zapotitos you keep the seed raw so the color stays the pale green of jade and the flavor stays clean. Grind it carefully. Push too far and the oils release and you have pumpkin seed butter instead of dulce. The almíbar must hit the hilo flojo, the soft ball, no further. The agua de azahar is non-negotiable. It is the perfume that tells you you are eating a Yucatecan candy and not an imitation.

My mother had no Yucatecan recipes in her notebook. Jalisco was her kitchen. I learned this one from Doña Carmen, a vendor in the Lucas de Gálvez market who has been making zapotitos for forty-three years. She paints them in her lap with a brush the size of an eyelash. The first time I made them, I rushed the drying and the paint smeared. She laughed and said, 'La paciencia también es ingrediente.' Patience is also an ingredient. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Yucatán.

For Hanal Pixán, the Yucatec Maya day of the dead, the zapotitos sit on the altar among the candles, the photographs of the difuntos, the pib buried in the yard the day before. They are an ofrenda before they are a candy. The living eat them after. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.