All of a sudden I was a niño dressed in my Sunday best at someone’s wedding, breathing in puffs of freshly ground cinnamon and earthy anise.
She lifted the lid and turned back the pages of time. One cup of café con leche later, she was back, cradling a Tupperware container. My macho pride took a cowardly dive and hid in the bowl of pico de gallo. “Did you bake them first, then run them under the broiler? Did you grind the sugar and the cinnamon?” Norma calmly put down her tortilla and, like a neurosurgeon debriefing a cub scout who had performed brain surgery with a rusty knife, conducted a gentle yet thorough post mortem over plates of huevos rancheros. “I found your Mom’s pan de polvo recipe and made it,” I announced. I could almost hear their fillings, crowns, and root canals imploding beneath their tight but polite smiles.įast forward to Sunday breakfast at Elizabeth’s Tacos with my cousin Norma and her familia. “Here is a taste from the past,” I crowed as my sisters picked up the Civil War musket balls and popped them into their mouths. With a triumphant flourish I transported the Pan de Polvo to the next family fiesta. Get help before it’s too late.” Their cries were drowned out by the metallic squeal of the oven door closing.įorty-five minutes later, I rolled their over-cooked corpses around in sugar and powdered cinnamon. The galletitas looked at me with sad, cinnamon-colored eyes and seemed to sigh, “Call someone in the family. I looked down at the little balls of masa victims on their way up the pyramid for an Aztec sacrificio. Instead of estrella-shaped wonders, the cookie press extruded lumps of gummy, shapeless dough and made embarrassing, personal sounds that could have come from a very constipated elefante. I brewed the required cup of anise and cinnamon tea, and 12 cups of flour later, I was up to my elbows in an Aztec pirámide of masa. This translates to: “Let’s not clean up the
I became the Mexican Pillsbury Doughboy and announced to no one in particular, “Let’s bake.” Search our blog for other cookie recipes.Lard.Related cookies are Mexican wedding cookies and crescent cookies.Double the amount for the cinnamon-sugar topping if making many cookies. Each batch yields approximately 4-4 ½ dozen cookies (3×4.5=13.5 dozen or more than 160 pan de polvo). There is enough cinnamon-anise tea to use in three batches of cookie dough.Place the cookies in a shallow container and seal until ready to serve. While the cookies are still warm and moist, immediately roll them in the cinnamon-sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes or until the cookies are lightly browned on the edges. Place on a greased cookie sheet about two inches apart. Pinch out 1-inch balls and roll until smooth. Form into a ball and refrigerate for about 15-30 minutes for easier handling. Gradually add the flour mixture and blend until the dough sticks together. Pour in ¼ cup chilled cinnamon-anise tea and mix well. In a larger bowl, cream the shortening with the vanilla extract and sugar. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Strain over a sieve and refrigerate until ready to use the cinnamon-anise tea in the dough. Remove from the stovetop and cool to room temperature. In a small saucepan, boil the cinnamon sticks and anise seeds in water for about five minutes. ½ – 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we used Mexican vainilla).2/3 cup vegetable shortening, butter-flavored.These sweet treats have a crumbly texture that make them so irresistibly tasty that it is impossible to eat just one!įor those who plan to bake a batch of pan de polvo for a cookie exchange, this recipe is ideal because the cinnamon-anise tea can be used at least three times tripling the dough recipe yields beyond a dozen of a baker’s dozen! These cookies are easy to make for a crowd, whether for cookie exchanges, Christmas, Advent, weddings, special holidays and especially for National Cookie Day. At the various cookie exchange parties that Islander attends around this time of the year in South Texas, one cookie that is almost always present is pan de polvo, a type of Mexican shortbread with a dusting of cinnamon-sugar.