Baking

How to make a Día de los Muertos altar

November 1, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

A close-up of a Day of the Dead altar at the Escuela de Gastronomía in Roma

I had never built a Día de Los Muertos altar until two years ago. It was my first year in Mexico, so I put up a few photos and some candles, and a sugar skull I’d bought at the Feria de Alfeñique in Toluca. After the holiday was over I didn’t want to take my altar down. It made me feel centered, like I knew where I came from.

This year I was curious about all the altar decorations I kept seeing in the markets. So I took the Día de Los Muertos Ofrendas y Tradiciones course at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana, where I recently (last week!) finished up a diploma program in Mexican gastronomy.

The course would teach us about the tradition of the altar and the history of Día de los Muertos, and we’d get to cook some typical Day of the Dead foods: bean tamales, pan de muerto and calabaza en piloncillo.

Here’s what I learned.

The Elements of a Day of the Dead Altar

First off, you can really make the altar any way you want. There’s no right or wrong way to do it — the idea is that it’s something personal that speaks to you. That said, here are some general elements to include if you’ve never built one before:

1. Flowers

Making a cross out of cempasúchil for a Day of the Dead altar at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City

Cempasúchil, also spelled cempoalxochitl and other various ways, is an orange marigold. It’s Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead flower and it grows wild in many parts of the country. During Day of the Dead season here, the Mexico City government plants rows of cempasúchil on Reforma. In Mexico it’s customary to include vases of cempasúchil, petals, or rings of flowers on one’s altar. If you live elsewhere, any other seasonal flower would work as a substitute.

2. Fruit — specifically tejocotes and oranges.

A bag of tejocotes, known in English as a Mexican hawthorn apple

Tejocotes are a mild, seeded fruit that taste like a cross between an apple and a pear. No one I know eats them raw. Instead, you boil the fruit in syrup or cook it to make ponche. In the case of the Day of the Dead altar, the fruit, along with oranges and other seasonal items, symbolize the earth’s bounty. And it’s something for your loved ones to eat on their journey into the next world.

3. Papel Picado.

Papel picado symbolizes wind. It’s draped around the edges of the altar, or used to decorate the area behind the altar, if needed.

4. Foods your loved ones liked eating.

Food decorations for Day of the Dead altar

A miniature plate of sweet bread and atole, with rice and mole to the left

These little plates of food are made out of sugar and sold at almost any market in Mexico City. In general, the food element of the altar is one of the neatest ways to find out about your loved ones who’ve passed on.

Two years ago, when I was building my first altar, I wasn’t sure what my grandfather liked to eat. He died when I was little. So I called up my mom and asked her. She said spaghetti. (Me: “Spaghetti? Really?”) This year, I put out a little plate of quesadillas for my grandmother. I may also put a few dried spaghetti noodles for my Grandpa Joe.

5. Alfeñique.

Alfeñique, the art of making animals and other shapes out of sugar, was imported into Mexico from Europe. Today it’s customary to put a few of these animals on your altar. They’re sold at Mercado Merced and Mercado Jamaica, but the best place place to get them if you live in Mexico is the Feria de Alfeñique in Toluca, which occurs annually in October. Toluca is about 45 minutes to an hour west of Mexico City.

6. Pan de muerto.

I made this pretty little pan de muerto.

I didn’t realize how regional pan de muerto was. In Mexico City, we’re used to seeing the round domes with thin, knobby “bones” draped on top; in parts of Oaxaca they don’t make bread like this at all. That bread is larger, more eggy, with a woman’s face painted and baked into the top. Other areas of Mexico make bread in the shape of skulls, rabbits, pigs, crocodiles, hearts, or a pretzel shape that symbolizes fertility. It’s customary to place a few loaves on your altar.

7. Bean tamales. The bean symbolizes fertility, too. There’s a lot of fertility associated with this holiday, no?

8. A Xoloescuintle. It’s thought that Xolos helped spirits cross the river into the next world.

9. A glass of water. In case your loved ones are thirsty.

10. Salt. It’s nutritive and it restores bodily fluids. This is usually displayed in a little dish or bowl.

Here’s a final photo of the altar we built at school…

… and here’s mine at home, which I put together on Sunday.

Did you build an altar this year? What did you include?

Feliz Día de los Muertos!

UPDATE: If you want to make your own pan de muerto, here’s a recipe from Fany Gerson’s My Sweet Mexico that I posted last year.

Buttery, Mexican-style pan de elote

November 15, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Pan de elote literally means “corn bread,” and it’s one of those iconic Mexican desserts I can’t get enough of.

This is not like American cornbread at all. When it’s done right, it’s like the freshest homemade creamed corn crossed with a flan or bread pudding. It’s not so much a bread as a dense, buttery cake-pudding. That you just want to bury your face in. (As an aside, Azul y Oro was the first place that showed me how amazing pan de elote could be. If you go there, please order the pan de elote.)

I’ve been craving both sugar and corn lately, so last week, I picked up a few bags of fresh corn at the tianguis and decided to make pan de elote for the first time.

This being an iconic dish, I assumed there were several ways to make it. So I consulted my Mexican cookbooks to find a recipe I liked. Flipped through Diana Kennedy, Rick Bayless, Zarela Martinez, Josefina Velazquez de Leon and Fany Gerson before settling on Mexico en la Cocina de Marichu, a cookbook of traditional Mexican recipes published in 1969. (I bought it at the La Lagunilla market last year.)

In the “Reposteria” section, next to recipes for a Torta de Zanahoria and a Torta de Melón, was a simple recipe for a Torta de Elote. It contained only five ingredients: corn, butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Unassuming yet satisfying. Bingo.

The recipe called for grinding the corn up front, which would no doubt add that fresh corn flavor I craved. And it called for beating egg whites and folding them into the batter at the end — a step that kind of scared me a bit. I’m always afraid of under- or over-beating egg whites.

In the end, everything went fine, except for my crazy oven cooked the thing too fast. After two separate trips into the oven, the result was exactly what I’d hoped for: a rich, soft cake that tasted somewhere between creamed corn and the fresh, steamed ears they sell on the streets. Only sweet and slathered with butter.

I baked the corn cake in my springform pan because I didn’t want to fuss with removing anything from a greased dish, and I wanted to cut it into triangle-shaped wedges like they do in the restaurants.

Crayton took half of it to work. Later that afternoon I got a text from his coworker, Carlos. It read: “El pastel está GENIAL!”

The recipe’s below. For a similar pan de elote recipe with step-by-step photos, check out Mexico in My Kitchen.

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A plain but lovely pan de muerto, or Day of the Dead bread

November 3, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Día de los Muertos is my favorite holiday in Mexico City. I love the orange cempasúchitl flowers that suddenly pop up in the street medians and parks, and the altars sprinkled with flower petals and candles. I love watching the seasonal fall foods finally arrive in the markets: pan de muerto, calabaza en tacha, tejocotes.

Sadly, the Día de los Muertos season pretty much passed me by this year. I was traveling in the States through most of October, and then I got home and promptly caught a head cold. I was too sick to visit the Sugar Skull Market in Toluca like I did last year, or wander around checking out ofrendas.

One thing I could do, though, was make my own pan de muerto. Last year I took a class on how to make the round, orange-flavored loaves, so I was already familiar with what the dough contained — basically flour and a lot of butter — and how to form the ropes on top to make “bones.” The bread has a delicate orange taste, which comes from a few spoonfuls of orange blossom water, known in Spanish as agua de azahar.

I wanted to use Fany Gerson’s Pan de Muerto recipe from My Sweet Mexico. But I had to tweak a few things, because I was too tired and/or I didn’t have enough time to seek out the proper ingredients. Watered-down orange blossom essence became my substitute for agua de azahar, because it was all I could find. I dipped into my abundance of mascabado — unrefined cane sugar — and used that instead of regular white sugar, even though it made the dough less sweet.

Once I started baking, more issues popped up. My yeast starter, made from instant yeast and not active-dry as the recipe had stated, didn’t bubble, sending me into a panic. I couldn’t tell if my dough was too sticky, or not sticky enough. The dough also rose sloooowly: three hours during the first rising, and a whopping five after the dough chilled in the fridge overnight. (Note to Future Lesley: Do not place buttery dough in an heated oven to speed things up, as it’ll turn it into a greasy, sloppy mess.)

While my loaves baked, I discovered my oven temperature was whacked-out. My first batch looked pretty and golden-brown. When I sliced into it, the insides were still doughy and chewy.

So yeah. What I’m trying to say here is that both of my pan de muertos turned out kind of flat and homely.

I didn’t care too much in the end. The bread was the centerpiece of my Día de los Muertos celebration this year, and I was going to enjoy it. I sprinkled one loaf with sugar and the other without, as an experiment. I actually liked the un-sugared one better — it was lightly sweet and perfect with a cup of hot chocolate. Crayton and I each had a wedge for dessert on Nov. 1, while the candles burned on our altar. (Yes, that’s a bottle of Coke below. It’s for Crayton’s relatives in South Carolina.)

Here are the shots of my flattish, but still tasty, breads.

For more pan de muerto adventures, check out Three Clever Sisters (she also used Fany’s recipe, resulting in these cute, plump little loaves) and Steven McCutcheon-Rubio’s post on Serious Eats. If you made pan de muerto this year, send me a picture of it and I’ll post it here.

UPDATE: Here’s a picture of reader Isabel’s pan de muerto…

And Don Cuevas’s bread:

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Mamey scones

January 8, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Yeah. I went there.
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Crunchy lil’ buttermilk biscuits

August 25, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I have seen the light, and it is fatty, soft and pearlescent.

It’s lard. And it’s freaking heavenly in biscuits.

Made a batch of biscuits this morning, for the first time in years. My friend Tricia is hosting a South Carolina shrimp n’ grits meal at her house later today, so I decided to whip up some biscuits to go on the side. I’m always looking for excuses to try out Southern dishes, being married to a Southern boy. And I hadn’t tried the biscuit recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking, my favorite Southern cookbook ever. It called for lard only. No butter.

Luckily, lard is everywhere in Mexico. After doing the stairstepper for an hour at the gym this morning (ironic, no?), I stopped by our local teeny mercado, and bought 10 pesos worth. In USD that’s less than $1, and it equaled about two cups. It looked like a French cheese. Isn’t it pretty?

When I got home, I mixed together my flour and baking powder, and then squished in the lard with my fingers. I rolled out the dough and proceeded to cut out the biscuits with a drinking glass. (Biscuit cutters don’t reside in my house.) Unfortunately, I ignored the “DO NOT TWIST YOUR BISCUIT CUTTER INTO THE DOUGH!” rule, because really, I’ve always twisted my cutter, in the umm… maybe three times that I’ve made biscuits. How the heck else do you make a clean cut?

I should have headed Mr. Peacock and Ms. Lewis’ advice, though, because when the biscuits came out of the oven, they were disappointingly flat. Crunchy and hot and yummy, but flat.

The next round, I did not twist. Too bad I only had three biscuits left to make. But they emerged light and fluffy.

Who knew twisting your biscuit cutter would make such a difference?

Recipe below, if you want to try it yourself. Just please, please don’t twist your biscuit cutter into your dough, or else this biscuit will swallow you with his gigantic biscuit mouth.

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Blueberry oat scones

July 20, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

In an unexpectedly Mexican turn of events, I’ve become addicted to having something sweet and bready with my coffee in the morning. Mamey muffins, which might be the world’s most perfect coffee food, pushed me over the edge. Since then I’ve dabbled in walnut-raisin bread, cornbread smeared with butter, unleavened cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting, carrot spice muffins and, the most boring of them all, whole-wheat toast with honey. (Mamey, don’t worry, I’m coming back for you.)

Last week — finally succumbing to my addiction, and telling myself, “It’s okay if I just have a little bit, and then run for 45 minutes at the gym” — I made scones for the first time. These babies are dangerous: heavy cream in the batter. Little cold cubes of butter in there, too. And a sprinkling of turbinado and oats on top.

After licking every tidbit of batter of my mixing spoon, and immediately washing the bowl as to not tempt myself further, I stuck the little mounds of dough in the oven and waited. They emerged buttery and warm, and crisp on the outside, with just a hint of sugar. I ate a whole one and was moving onto a second before I literally had to tell myself: Lesley. No. Put the scones away.

In my Breakfast Bread Hall of Fame, these scones are in the top three. Threatening mamey muffins with a bullet.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re hungry for a sweet thing in the morning, too.
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Apple brown betty and homemade cinnamon ice cream

May 6, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

So, um, those cinnamon rolls…

They didn’t turn out very well. The flavor was fine. (Well, okay, I could have added more butter.) But they didn’t rise. And they were hard. Even with the cream cheese frosting…. it was like biting into a cinna-frisbee. Bleh. Maybe I boasted too much about kicking the dough’s butt?

So. With a bowl of cream cheeese frosting in the fridge, I probably should have made a quick bread or something and used up the leftovers. But no. I needed dessert redemption. I had to make something else, something that was not a bread. Something that had lots of butter and sugar and required little work. Something with the name “Betty” in the title.

Seriously: How cute is the name Apple Brown Betty? Even before the Cinnamon Roll Disaster of 2009, I’ve been wanting to make some. My friend Jesica was entranced, too, so today she came over, we cued up The Pioneer Woman and got to work.

Apple Brown Betty is basically a gooey, buttery, sweet apple casserole, with bread crumbs holding everything together. Pioneer Woman’s recipe called for cubes of wheat bread, but if I make it again, I’d probably use white breadcrumbs. Something about little chunks of wheat bread didn’t sit well with me.

None of that even matters, though, because the best part was the two scoops of love on top: Homemade cinnamon ice cream, y’all. (Insert swoon.) My mom got me the ice-cream-maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer before I left for Mexico, and I finally unpacked it and put it to use. It was actually amazingly easy: Cook the batter (and ignore the massive amounts of heavy cream); chill it overnight; then pour it into the frozen mixer bowl and watch it churn. Thirty minutes later, done.

And when we stuck our spoons into the ice cream bowl…. man. Oh man. This was creamy, delicate stuff, whispering of cinnamon. Jesica even admitted that she wasn’t even that excited about cinnamon ice cream in the first place, but this stuff — it kind of socked you upside the head, you know? In a good way.

I promise, my dessert spree is over for the next few days. I’m dreaming of mamey ice cream, but I’m going to log 5 hours at the gym before I do it. The gyms re-open tomorrow, yay!

A dream realized: Whole wheat mamey muffins

April 20, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

As you know, I’ve been adoring mamey lately. I bought another one on Friday at Mercado San Juan (more on that trip later), and I thought: I HAVE to bake something with this. It’s crying out to be more than a breakfast fruit.

Bread seemed like too much work. Pancakes, eh, not feeling them lately. But muffins. Muffins I could do. Muffins barely required any mixing. And my muffin pan was getting a little muffin top-ish around the middle. It needed a workout.

Since mamey tastes faintly of sweet potato (to me anyway), I trolled the Internet for a sweet potato muffin recipe. And bingo. The Wednesday Chef delivered.

Last night around 9 p.m. the sweet, warm scent of baking mamey muffins filled the apartment. I seriously wanted to bottle it and somehow post it on the Internet, just so you could all know. Hopefully scent technology is not too far away.

When they were done, I carefully extracted one from the pan, burned my fingers, split the muffin open and smeared it with butter. LORD. They were moist. Hot. Gently spicy, with just a whisper of ginger. My brain did backflips. This is how good they were. (Also, another sign, when I tasted the batter earlier — because you know, you gotta do that — I wanted to ravish the whole bowl.)

Recipe after the jump.
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