Desserts & baking recipes
Flan, churros, turrón and the convent sweets.
12 recipes
Arroz con Leche
Spain's slow-simmered rice pudding, scented with cinnamon and lemon peel, with Asturias famous for finishing the top under a burnt-sugar crust. Homely and comforting, it is the dessert of grandmothers everywhere in the north.
Buñuelos de Viento
Light choux fritters that puff hollow as they fry, their name meaning puffs of wind for their airy centres. A traditional All Saints' sweet across Spain, they are dusted with sugar or piped full of cream, custard or chocolate.
Churros con Chocolate — Madrid breakfast at home
Crisp ridged churros with thick drinking chocolate. The dough is a simple choux; a star nozzle helps, but even spooned strips fry up beautifully.
Crema Catalana — citrus custard with a crackling top
Catalonia’s answer to crème brûlée: milk infused with lemon and cinnamon, set on the stove, finished with a burnt-sugar crust. No oven needed.
Ensaimada
Mallorca's coiled spiral pastry is made from a lard-enriched dough stretched almost transparently thin, then rolled, proofed slowly and baked to a feather-light crumb. Dusted with icing sugar, it is the island's beloved breakfast treat.
Flan
This silky baked egg custard turns simple pantry staples into something quietly luxurious, its bittersweet caramel pooling over the top the moment you turn it out. The magic is in the contrast between the soft, wobbling custard and the dark, faintly burnt caramel.
Leche Frita
Fried milk is northern Spain's cleverest dessert: a thick, cold pastry cream cut into squares, breaded and fried so the outside crisps while the inside stays molten and creamy. Dusted with cinnamon sugar, it is comfort food at its most nostalgic.
Natillas
Natillas are Spain's everyday stirred custard, loose and pourable rather than set, scented with lemon peel and cinnamon and thickened gently with egg yolks. Crowned with a Maria biscuit and a dusting of cinnamon, they are the taste of countless Spanish childhoods.
Polvorones
Polvorones are Andalusia's crumbliest Christmas shortbread, made with toasted flour, lard and almonds so tender they dissolve to powder in the mouth. The trick is a well-toasted flour and a light hand, and each one is traditionally twisted up in tissue paper.
Tarta de Santiago
The Galician almond cake of the pilgrim road, tarta de santiago is intensely almondy, moist and completely flourless, bound only by eggs and lifted with citrus. The stencilled cross of Saint James on top is its signature.
Torrijas
Spain's Easter treat, torrijas transform stale bread into something custardy and golden, perfumed with cinnamon and lemon and drenched in warm syrup or honey. The secret is letting the bread soak long enough to go soft to the core.
Turrón de Alicante
Turrón de Alicante is the hard, brittle nougat of a Spanish Christmas: toasted almonds suspended in cooked honey and set firm with whipped egg white. It takes patience at the stove, as the honey must cook long and slow to reach the right snap.
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