Polvorones: Mexican shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth
“Anna opened the box. Wow. Inside were four beautiful, freshly baked pastries. Anna didn’t know what kind they were, but they looked and smelled utterly delicious. Two were in shades of green, the other two in shades of purple, and the warmth of them bled through the box and into her hands and chased some of the cold away.
“They’re pan dulce,” said the girl. “I knew someone needed them, so I baked them. I knew as soon as I saw you that it was you.”
― Sangu Mandanna, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
Polvorones take many shapes from round wedding cookies to flat cookies covered with sprinkles. Popular in spain as well as other countries like Mexico and the Philippines, these lard-enriched cookies are tender and crumble at the slightest touch. These colorful treats have always been a go-to cookie when visiting pandereas. Often I would see the bright pink cookies layered in the window of a bakery and would stop in my tracks. Inevitably I would return home with a stained pink bakery box filled with treats including more than a half dozen or more of the weighty, yet delicate, Polverone cookies.
Polvorón comes from the Spanish “polvo,” a word for powder or dust and is a type of heavy, soft, and very crumbly Spanish shortbread made of flour, lard or butter, sugar…
