Sweet Tooth

Two days after Easter, and I’m 5 minutes to midnight on the “Death by Sugar” clock. Or, maybe I’m on orangish-magenta alert. The point is that I’ve eaten so many chocolates and sweets this week (and every week prior) that I have to dignify it with a blog about the best Chilean sweets.

There’s a very plump lady that sits outside of the university library every day selling irresistible home-made chocolaty treats for about 20 cents each. I call this woman “La Brujita” – the little witch. And although her excessive figure should heed a warning, we American girls have a terrible time getting past her, with pockets full of change and some ready excuse to justify the sugar rush. Among the selection of chocolate-covered almond bars, fruit-filled truffles and bon bons, you’ll find the mack daddy – a 5-layered alfajor.

The alfajor (Arabic for al-hasu, meaning “stuffed” or “filled”) is a sandwich-style cookie or biscuit filled with fruit or dulce de leche, and covered with chocolate. It’s sold all over South America, and is especially common in Argentina and Chile. While I’ve sampled similar treats in the states, usually made with caramel sandwiched between two Ritz crackers, dipped in chocolate, the secret ingredient in the South American alfajor is love.

Ok, not love. It’s the dulce de leche.

Dulce de leche, or manjar (man-har) as it’s called in Chile, is a sweetened, condensed milk product. I don’t really know how it’s made (although I’ll soon learn about it in my dairy products technology class) but it’s deliciously addictive. It’s similar to caramel and replaces peanut butter here as favorite baking additive, bread spread and spoon-licked treat. McDonalds even sells a Manjar sundae. When we first arrived in Chile, I resented dulce de leche for replacing my beloved peanut butter, and I refused to eat it. But it’s definitely grown on me since, especially in the alfajores.

(Side story: I’m reading about how to prepare dulce de leche, and apparently it’s common in Spain to cook sweetened condensed milk for a few hours. Once, my sister needed to make it for Spanish class, so my mother – following directions – put the unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan of boiling water and left to go running. An hour or so later, she returned to a kitchen exploded with a burnt, sticky caramel-like substance, ceiling, floor, all. Ha-ha, my poor mother.)

So as I sit here in the library enjoying my alfajor, it brings back a flood of sweet memories from my Chilean experience so far. When we arrived to Chile in February, still hung over from the Christmas cookie season, I found myself in the middle of a warm and sunny South American summer and ice cream season. And unlike our guilty pleasure status of sweets in the states, there’s no shame in eating ice cream here. My first day in Valdivia, Marcelo took us to sample the best ice cream in the city. The place – Entre Lagos, a decent, but rather expensive restaurant. Here it’s better to skip the meal and dive into their selection of gourmet coffees and desserts. If opting for ice cream, know that while the cones aren’t massively overstuffed, they usually give you two choices of flavors in the same cone, so choose wisely. I recommend a scoop of Swiss chocolate on a scoop of pistachio.

Thanks to the German influence in the area, kuchen is a staple on any dessert menu in town. Kuchen simply means “cake” in German, and with such a wide variety of flavors and variations, it’s difficult to classify it as anything else. Usually sliced in wedges like a pie, I’ve commonly seen three types of kuchen in this area: miga, nuez and frambuesa. Kuchen de miga tastes similar to coffee cake with a top layer of crumbs. Nuez simply means nuts, and the frambuesa contains a healthy amount of raspberries.

One thing you won’t find here is a Krispie Kreams (although my mother offered to ship me some.) Instead, sopapillas cover the sweet, fried dough category. And that’s pretty much what they are. Fried dough sprinkled with sugar or filled with cheese. As Marcelo described them to us, “When you’re a kid, and it’s cold and rainy outside, you ask your mom to make sopapillas. They’re warm and sweet, and it’s the perfect rainy-day treat.” Nicole and I bought a box mix, struggled though Spanish instructions, and ended up with a few burnt bread discs and an apartment smelling of fried foods.

A dessert that Nicole and I did manage to successfully recreate is the ever-notorious flan. I still haven’t figured out this stuff, a mix between pudding and jell-o, I suppose. You can buy it here in a snack cup right alongside pudding, jell-o and yogurt cups. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, or maybe I’m just too stuck on fruity jell-o, but nothing about flan makes my mouth water.

So that’s an account of my sugar high here in South America. As of late, I’ve been snacking on an Easter basket filled with Starbursts, M&M’s and Reese’s peanut butter cups, thanks to a surprise visit from the Easter Bunny (Nicole’s mom. THANK YOU HOLLY!) While you can find shelves stocked with exotic candy bars and foreign delicacies, it helps to curb the homesickness to have some familiar favorites around. So feel free to send me some.

BIRTHDAY!