Polvorones de Cajeta Bajío

Guanajuato, in the Bajío, gives you this cookie through Celaya. That matters. The Bajío is wheat country, dairy country, panadería country, and Celaya's cajeta is not a decoration here. It is the reason the cookie exists.

The filling is cajeta de leche de cabra, goat milk cooked down slowly until it turns amber, glossy, and just a little sharp at the finish. Do not use canned cow-milk caramel and call it the same thing. It isn't. The goat milk gives cajeta its bite, and that bite is what keeps a sweet cookie from becoming childish.

The dough belongs to the panadería register: harina, manteca vegetal, azúcar glass, vainilla. Tender, pale, sandy. I learned this triangle shape from a woman in Celaya who kept cardboard templates in a flour tin and cut every cookie by hand before Christmas orders swallowed her whole week. She didn't talk much. She just watched the dough and corrected the pressure of the rolling pin. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.

My mother was from Jalisco, so cajeta was a purchased treasure in our kitchen, brought home in a jar and hidden badly in the pantry. She wrote one line in her notebook: 'galleta seca, cajeta buena.' Dry cookie, good cajeta. That is the whole lesson. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.