This, dear friends, is an alfajor. It is rich and sweet beyond belief, tenaciously gripping the inside of your mouth, while your fingers are left heavy with the smell and feel of butter that won't quite wash off. It is not for the faint of heart, or dairy intolerant. And, quite frankly, it's a pain in the ass to make. Which is why these alfajores are always last on my list of holiday consumables to make, requiring the relative low-maintenance of biscotti to whet my baking appetite.
In past years, what made these confections so painful was the fact that, while they required pretty much a day's worth of labor, the yield was disparagingly low, making for a scant handful (if you had the hands of a Smurf) of giftable units. And then there's the inherent danger. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise; the only right way to make dulce de leche is to drop a can of sweetened condensed milk into a full pot of boiling water, and for four long hours sweat bullets knowing that one day, while attempting this feat, you will forget what you are doing and neglect to keep the water level above the can, resulting in an impossible mess on the ceiling of the kitchen in your rented house.
Last year, I decided to pass entirely on the endeavor. My parents — one an Argentine, the other the wife of one — cried foul, and so this year I was back in the kitchen for another round with the alfajores.
The difference this year is that I now have a husband who has brought back for me some Parisian macarons. When Mr. New Media suggested that he might be conferring in The City of Light without me (the cost and reality of me transatlantically schlepping two ungratefully whiny little ones summarily ruling out such possibility of me simply tagging along), I was a tad resentful. But then I turned to the macarons, whose images had been making the rounds through seemingly every blog I frequent. And I sent him to Paris, by himself, with orders to bring me some.
The thing is, all those images, like this and this and this, offered no context, just pretty, macro-tastic shots of cookies stacked in teetering towers. And, because of their shapely resemblance to hamburgers, I just assumed they were, well, bigger. But when the husband brought back slick embossed boxes lined with neat little rows of macarons in every pastel shade imaginable, I was surprised to see that they were the size of a thumbprint. The French evidently know a thing or two about food. Each one of those thumbprints popped perfectly into my mouth, no need for uncouth chomps that would send wasted crumbs dribbling from my chin.
So this year saw the advent of the mini-alfajor. They're easier to make. When the only thing holding your cookie together is butter, the smaller the surface area, the better. I'm able to pile on more of the golden stuff. And small = precious, so a few go a long way. Assign each alfajorlet its own little wrapper, line them up in a nice tin, and you've got yourself something highly giftable.
That big, chocolate-covered thing is a commercially produced Alfajor, sent from my parents who just returned from their Argentine vacation. It was this same variety that served as my introduction to the cookie nearly two decades ago. Its similarities to mine or the ones you'd find in a cookbook are minimal, but it has its own delicious merits nonetheless. This Havanna one is more like the best Moon Pie you've ever had. Cakey and tongue-coatingly sweet. And rich as hell. Quite the treat, especially since I only get it when someone visits from Argentina. But now that they're on my brain, I'm thinking I have to find a local source…
