National treat, International delight

One of the reasons I barely achieve to go into a diet must be my love for sweet. It's one of my passions in life, tasting delicious food specially sweet food. And today was no exception.
We happened to go out to a small town called Tepotzotlán very near to the city. This is a very cute town, it has a huge monastery and Mexico's greatest collection of sacred art within it's walls. That however is not my favorite part of the town.
Each sunday, like in most towns, there is a market in the center of the town and loads of different things to buy, hand-made bags, blouses, carpets, paintings, accesories and many more. Also as you might have guessed, there is plenty of food, natural ice shaves, corn, fried potatoes, fried bananas... and a whole lot of traditional treats, tamarindos, cocadas, pepitorias, alegrías and many more.

Always colourful in Mexico!

From all of these variations and delicious treats, there has always been a personal favorite. This is a sweet I find so tempting and delicious that I must have it anytime I see it. That sweet is called muégano.
Muéganos are made by deep frying small bits of a paste, stack them in a small mount and then covering them in hot syrup made with piloncillo and water which is our version of common sugar syrup. After pouring it, the syrup will eventually cool and harden. Thus making very nice mounts of a hard crusted soft insided sweet.

Left's my mom's unopened one, right's mine... being eaten *¬*

Later on the evening, when we came back from our trip, dad wanted to have some pasties for dinner and stopped by a very well know pattiserié of Mexico, El Globo. And again I delighted myself with a delicious sweet called Napoleon made of layers. First and base level is a very thin layer of phyllo paste, second is a sponge cake, third is a deliciously (and sinfully fat filled) whipped cream layer that then is topped with another thin layer of phyllo. All covered in icing sugar.

Ah, such a delicious pastry...

Meat Cake Nostalgia

It's been days since I started feeling like I needed something different than the usual. And I definitely knew what it was that I missed.
My godmother used to make this particular meat cake when I was a child and I loved it, it was on my top favorites list, right next to the bread crumbles deep fried chicken (ah, how I yearn youth, not having to worry at all of oversaturated oils...).
I kept talking and talking about the meat cake for a whole week until we went to the market and bought some grounded meat. So I called my godmother and asked her for the recipe. I'm so excited that I'm posting the recipe and the results. By the way, I'm not sure whether it's a real meat cake or has any other name, but that's the way I've know it for my entire life.
With no more a-do, here's the easiest meat cake recipe in the world (or at least I think so):


600 gr. grounded meat.
1 diced carrot (into really small dices)
1 diced potatoe (into really small dices)
1/4 finely chopped onion
1 smashed garlic clove, be sure to have it like a paste or else the taste will be unbearable.
1/4 tsp. cumin (or less if you don't really like cumin)
1 tbsp. concentrated chicken broth
salt
pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and place them in a cake mold (20 cm with or larger). Cook it over boiling water for 40 minutes. To check it's done insert a knife in the middle, if it comes out dry then it's done.

Now, I'll give you some hints for this one, first of all, don't tell your family what the cake's got in until they taste it, my mother hates cumin but as I never told her the cake had cumin she loved it.
Second is... never ever of your life use a 2 pieces cake mold, I used one and after the cooking I realized that a lot of the boiling water had leeked into the cake. It was still very tasty but the water was definately not expected. XP

And here's my meat cake, ready to be eaten.

Bon Appétite!