Pay de Queso de Bola Yucateco

This is from Yucatán. Specifically from Mérida, and even more specifically from the kitchen of Tere Cazola, the pastelera who made this dessert famous in the 1980s when her little shop on Calle 60 started selling it by the slice and then by the whole pie to families who came across the city for it. The pay de queso de bola is not a centuries-old dish. It is a modern Yucatecan classic, and that is its own kind of authority.

The ingredient that makes it is the queso de bola. Edam cheese, the red-waxed ball that came to the peninsula on Dutch trading ships in the colonial era and never left. Yucatán cooks treat queso de bola the way Oaxaca treats quesillo: as their own. It shows up stuffed and baked in queso relleno, grated over papadzules, and here, in the dessert that translates the salty-aged bite of an aged cow's milk cheese into something sweet without losing the cheese itself. If you use mild cheese or a fresh cheese, you are making a different dessert. La identidad esta en la bola roja.

Do not look for queso de bola at a regular supermarket cheese counter. Look for it in the Mexican grocery, in the Latin Caribbean section, or order the Dutch original online. The wax-coated ball is what you want, aged and salty, not pre-grated. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Yucatán's kitchen brings the Caribbean, Lebanon, the Maya, and the Dutch to the same table without apology.