candy

A pile of muéganos, from Flickr user Jackie Palacios

Per my usual food experience in Mexico City, I kept seeing muéganos on the street and had no idea what they were. Was this a nutty popcorn ball of sorts? Or a sickly sweet, praline concoction where you could feel the sugar granules under your teeth?

Fany’s cookbook had a recipe. It turns out muéganos are fried-dough balls, stuck together with piloncillo syrup. Since I am the girl who orders a buñuelo off the street and then greedily eats the whole thing, muéganos were not a snack that I could miss.

So, a few days ago, I ventured to the candy vendor who sits outside the Palacio de Hierro parking lot under a blue umbrella. (I’m guessing he hands people candy through their car windows.) Like a lot of other street candy vendors, he sells gaznates — tube-shaped pastries stuffed with meringue — and cocadas. One muégano was kind of expensive: 15 pesos, or more than a dollar.

Being a good food blogger, I meant to take my muégano home and get a photo first. But just knowing there was fried, sticky-sweet dough ball in my purse, I couldn’t help myself and bit into it right away.

Wow. This thing was dangerous. A lot of Mexican candies are overwhelmingly sweet, but the muégano seemed balanced, with the caramel taste of Cracker Jack popcorn. It was kind of like eating a syrup-soaked buñuelo that had hardened in the sun somehow.

I loved it.

My partially eaten muégano

Obviously I can’t order them every day, but I may get one again, when an alegría doesn’t suffice.

Have you tried muéganos before?

UPDATE DEC. 2012: I have learned since I wrote this post (more than 3 years ago now!) that the items pictured in the above photo are *not* alegrias, but pepitorias. And I still love them just as much. There’s nothing better for when you’re hungry and stuck in traffic in Xochimilco.

The first time I saw an alegría pepitoria, clutched in the hand of a Mexico City street vendor, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. “Alegrías!” the vendor yelled. “Diez pesos!”

The item, wrapped in cellophane, looked like a half-moon shaped party favor — one of those bright, tissue-paper spheres that you unfold and hang from the ceiling. Except it had little pumpkin-seed teeth lining its edges.

I wondered about the alegría pepitoria for a long time — what do Mexicans do with this? Do people really have that many fiestas, where they feel the need to buy party favors on the street? — until finally, when I was in traffic one day, I saw a family buy a package. The father opened it, pulled one out and ate it.

It was food!

Of course it was food.

But still: This thing looked like a paper taco that had the air sucked out of it. What…? Why…?

Strolling through the Alameda Central last Friday, my curiosity finally got the best of me. I bought a package and carefully laid it in my bag, so I could bite into later it at home and savor the first bite.

That evening, I tore open the package. I took out a pink one — three or four were included in the package — and bit into it.

CRUNCH.

Whoa. That was a seriously massive crunch. And then… oh. [Picture me munching thoughtfully.] This was like a wafer. Thin, sugary, but not too sweet. And wow. The pumpkin seeds were attached to the edges with honey. I’d wondered about that.

I bit into it a few more times, each bite capturing the same crunch you’d get biting into a fresh carrot. Took a picture before I could demolish the whole thing.

Next time I’m hungry for something sweet on the street, I’m buying a package of these odd little guys. And if anyone out there knows the history of how they’re made, please fill me in. All I could find on the Internet was info about the other Mexican alegrías — the bars made from honey and amaranth grain.