Polvorones Ticuleños de Hanal Pixán

These polvorones come from Ticul, a small town in the Puuc region of southern Yucatán, about an hour and a half south of Mérida. Ticul is known for two things: the alfareros who throw the red clay pottery you see all over the peninsula, and the panaderias that line the streets around the plaza. The polvoron ticuleño belongs to those panaderias.

A polvoron is not a galleta. A galleta has structure. A polvoron has none. It is made to crumble. The word comes from polvo, dust, and that is exactly what should happen the moment one touches your tongue. The Yucatecan version is built on three things: toasted flour, manteca de cerdo, and patience. Skip the toasting and you have a raw-tasting cookie. Use butter instead of lard and you have a different cookie altogether, a perfectly fine one, but it is not a polvoron ticuleño. La manteca es el sabor.

The bright sprinkles, grageas de colores, are not decoration. They are the marker that says: this is for Hanal Pixán. From October 31 through November 2, families in Yucatán build altares for the souls of the dead. Hanal Pixán means food of the souls in Maya. The altar holds pib (the underground-cooked mucbipollo), candles, cempasuchil flowers, water for the thirsty traveler, and sweets. The polvorones go on the children's altar, the altar for los angelitos, because the bright colors are for the children who come home first. My notebook has a page from a panadera in Ticul named Doña Hilaria, who told me in 2014: the dead remember the color. Cada estado, su propia cocina, y este es de Yucatán.