Dessert Tasting: Canela y Azucar

Miss Yunks has always felt a strong affection towards desserts.  When she connected with Mariela and learned about her baking business, she was so excited about the opportunity to taste her Latin fusion desserts.  Check out the mouth-watering photos on Mariela’s Facebook page for her business Canela y Azucar and you’ll want to dive right in too.

Mariela offered her home for a small tasting and allowed me to invite a few other bloggers to join the fun.  Michelle, Rachel, Molly, and I sat around Mariela’s beautiful dining table with this massive dessert display before us.

I was really surprised and delighted to see Mariela prepared so many desserts for us to taste!  Mariela offered us tea or coffee and I really admired her dishes.  The teapot shaped small plate for the tea spoon was so cute.

We began chatting about Mariela’s business, her baking and cooking experiences, and some history on Latin desserts.  I also learned what the name Canela y Azucar means – Cinnamon and Sugar! Such a great name for a bakery.  The signature cinnamon and sugar cookies were unlike any cookies I’d ever tasted.

These butterfly shaped cookies were well coated in cinnamon and sugar.  The cookies looked like they’d be hard and crunchy but they actually fell apart in my mouth, not my hand.  They had such an interesting texture to be sturdy enough to hold without a crunch.  I don’t usually like crunchy cookies so these were perfect for me.

I tasted all of the small cookies before we cut the cakes.

The lemon zingers were a surprisingly light and flaky pastry cup filled with intense lemon flavor.  I expected it to be like a mini pie, but it wasn’t at all.  The apple empanadas are filled with homemade apple jam and the turnover dough was perfectly soft and let the apple flavor shine through.  The medallion cookies were also filled with homemade jam.

The pecan rounds were also unlike typical American cookies and delightfully soft unlike the shortbread they appear to be.

The pecan puff reminded me of cookie dough.  It looks like a truffle, but has the texture of cookie dough.  I loved the flavor in this little bite.

The small bites were all delicious, but I was most looking forward to the impossible cake. When Mariela explained how she makes this cake, it really does seem impossible.

It looks like a giant doughnut.  But, it’s much more inventive than a doughnut.  The impossible cake is a decadent chocolate cake baked inside flan, with gooey caramel on top.  When baking, the caramel actually goes in the pan first, and then the chocolate, and then the flan.  Through the mystery of science and baking, it ends up like this with this chocolate on the bottom and the caramel flan on top.

The taste was just as magnificent as the presentation.  The light flan is the perfect compliment to the dense chocolate cake.

Last, we tasted the three milks, or tres leches cake.

I had assumed that the three milks in this cake were part of the cake batter, but they’re actually added after the cake is baked.  The layer cake is coated in whipped cream and topped with strawberries, kiwi, and peach slices.  Latin desserts are commonly very colorful.

There were strawberries with the whipped cream in the middle layer.  The three milks cake was incredibly moist and was the sweetest dessert we tasted.  I noticed that none of the desserts were overly sweet the way a lot of American desserts are.  This made it much easier to eat so many desserts in one sitting!

Mariela was the epitome of proper hospitality and incredibly generous to share her desserts.  I can honestly recommend her desserts for any occasion.  I believe her miniature desserts would be a huge hit at a wide range of events from a bridal shower to a book group meeting.  Her cakes would add flair to any celebration.

If you’re interested in ordering any of Mariela’s desserts, check out her website for pricing and contact information.  For more photos of the goods, check out her Facebook page.

Thank you to Mariela for hosting this tasting, to the girls that came, and to BF for the introduction!