Today I bring you cake and not just any cake. A cake inspired by the Mexican dish calabaza en tacha, where pumpkin is cooked way down in a spiced piloncillo syrup until soft as can be and then eaten with crema. It’s a meal usually prepared around Día de los Muertos and for the holidays, and a recipe I’d been attempting to perfect since October when the idea first nudged me. I see an ingredient, any ingredient, and my brain makes a direct line to cake. Instead of pumpkin, I wanted to use ...| At Heart Panaderia
This recipe was first shared on my now defunct Patreon. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider subscribing to my recipe Substack. I feel the stirrings of change as we hit the spring equinox and Aries season today. This Patreon may seem like the foundation of my work because I tend to it every week, but the bakery is the work that is “rooted in the real world”, as the late and great Rachel Pollack describes in her book and my tarot bible, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. In an ex...| At Heart Panaderia
*This recipe was originally published October 2022 to my now defunct Patreon. I spent a lot of my time at my pop up over the weekend at a Día de Muertos Festival answering questions about masa. My pop up menu included a masa layer cake made with Masienda’sHeirloom Red Corn Masa, and these masa piloncillo chocolate chunk cookies that I, frankly, am obsessed with. The questions surprised me some, considering our surrounding that day, the air thick with the scent of fresh corn tortillas hitti...| At Heart Panaderia
Many, if not all, of my previous attempts at biscuit-making left me wanting. And annoyed. Whether I was grating the butter into the dry ingredients, my warm hand basically melting the butter as I grated, or using a pastry cutter that I always felt just got in my way, my biscuits usually ended up too tough. That is, until I learned about the fraisage method. The fraisage method (hilariously sometimes also known as “Frasier dough”) is a process for smearing cold butter into dry ingredients ...| At Heart Panaderia
“When the roses speak, I pay attention.” - Mary Oliver I still remember the first flower I placed on a cake for decoration – a soft pink snapdragon on a tres leches. I had no idea about floral arrangement yet, but the natural curvature of the stem seemed to just ask to be placed in a way that would accentuate both flower and cake. The result was rather haphazard; florals placed with no sense of composition or style other than I thought they looked good where I placed them. Ever since, I...| At Heart Panaderia
Sometimes a craving becomes an obsession and I have to set time aside to do something about it. The result is this chewy, slightly tart, appropriately sweet hibiscus caramel candy. This recipe asks you to simply reduce a sweetened hibiscus tea, then add the rest of the caramel ingredients and cook until it reaches a specific temperature. We are going for a firm ball stage in candy-making, which means cooking the caramel until it hits between 240F and 250F on a candy thermometer OR forms a fir...| At Heart Panaderia
The classic churro gets a masa harina makeover.| At Heart Panaderia
Let me walk you through the concha-making process.| At Heart Panaderia
The foundation for At Heart Panadería’s Masa Peach Melba cake| At Heart Panaderia
This recipe was first shared on my Patreon, where I share weekly recipes sometimes behind a paywall and other times not. Going forward all free Patreon recipes will get cross-posted to this blog. If you enjoy what you see and read here, please consider supporting me and my work! I said there wouldn’t be a recipe this week because I'd be too busy with a deadline and custom cake order, but I was organized and focused enough to jot this down for you from my scattered iPhone Notes. This is the ...| At Heart Panaderia
My version of the classic South American cookie, the alfajor, gets toasted Georgia pecans in the dough and of course some pretty pink dusted on top. With nuts, these are technically alfajor de nuez (“of nuts”, in Spanish); I’ve seen this made most commonly with walnuts but Georgia has pecans so pecans it was. Toasting the pecans before grinding them down in a food processor is exactly how I start the recipe for the linzer cookies I used to make at my now dead in the ground, long gone on...| At Heart Panaderia
As promised, this week’s recipe is empanada dough. Last week’s empanada test, a sore memory to me now, was made correct by omitting the leaf lard I was so insistent on using and replacing it with butter. I sometimes am trying to do too much or be too extra in the attempt to make the recipes unique, but when I fuck up in the kitchen it becomes a good reminder to me that I certainly don’t have to reinvent any wheels here. I am only trying to help you eat well. Masa, my beloved ingredient,...| At Heart Panaderia
Roasted poblano oil is the main fat in this small batch flour tortilla recipe.| At Heart Panaderia
Chocolate almond cookie sandwiched between dark chocolate nutmeg ganache and more spiced rum cherry piloncillo compote.| At Heart Panaderia
A boozy, spiced, syrupy cherry piloncillo mixtue combined with 70% dark chocolate and a salty/crunchy chocolate and cinnamon graham cracker crust makes for a luxurious Christmas pie.| At Heart Panaderia
This recipe was first shared on my Patreon , where I share weekly recipes sometimes behind a paywall and other times not. Going forward all free Patreon recipes will get cross-posted to this blog. If you enjoy what you see and read here, please consider supporting me and my work!| At Heart Panaderia
When I was first starting out writing recipes I dog-eared and highlighted nearly every page in The Recipe Writer’s Handbook by Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Jane L. Baker. In it, the authors instruct recipe writers to “assume nothing” about the reader or the level of their cooking skill. I’ve been goi| At Heart Panaderia
Canned pumpkin puree replaces the eggs that are typically in this dough. Make sure to get canned pumpkin puree and not pumpkin pie filling, which is a different ingredient entirely. Pumpkin puree is usually sold in a 15 ounce can, which means you will have just shy of 1 cup of puree leftover. I know| At Heart Panaderia
A ginger-forward 1-layer holiday cake featuring piloncillo, an unrefined whole cane sugar typically found in both sweet and savory Mexican dishes.| At Heart Panaderia
This masa harina custard bun floated to the surface of my brain during a slow bakery week. I became obsessed that week with making a custard thickened only with masa harina and eggs. I also wanted to avoid cornstarch in order to show all that masa harina could be and do on its own. This meant that I| At Heart Panaderia
