Discover authentic Mexican sweet treats at your local panaderia.
Most bakeries follow a common daily routine: Bakers arrive in the early hours of the morning to craft delicious dough of all different sorts. While the goodies bake, a fragrant aroma wafts out the doors into the dim early morning light, and just as warm treats are arranged carefully on the shelves of the display counter, a line begins to form. As the day wears on, doors open and happy customers leave with mountainous brown-paper-wrapped goodies, leaving shelves empty by afternoon.
This scene is typical of a morning at Reno’s Panadería Las Palomas, where dozens of traditional Mexican sweets line shelves, illustrating the life’s work of one couple who has realized its culinary dreams through the bakery. Perhaps the only difference, co-owner Maria Perez says, is that Mexicans eat sweets in the morning and the evening, with coffee and with milk, respectively. So those bags most people leave with? They’re double-sized here.
Everything at Las Palomas is made from scratch with love. Maria’s husband, Merced, began his career working at Reno’s Nugget Casino Resort at just 17 years old. He would watch the bakers, fascinated, and eventually was granted the opportunity to follow in their footsteps.
Over the course of 25 years, Merced learned from pastry chefs from all over the world and trained in the art of French patisserie, while Maria fell in love with pastries while working in the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa’s bakery. The two later went back to their cultural roots to purchase and revamp Las Palomas.
Mexican pastry, Maria says, is really difficult to learn, and her favorite moments are when she gets to help refine recipes and receive feedback.
“I love the fact that when I come in the morning, my husband and [our] baker are making something, and they’re like ‘try this.’ I love the discussions of, ‘We need to add more or do this.’ And then people, when they come, their reactions are priceless,” she says.
Traditional Flavors
You won’t see any filled pastries in a Mexican bakery, but these treats utilize a few distinctive Mexican flavors. There’s the warm spice of cinnamon in treats such as empanadas; it’s mixed with sugar and dusted on light, airy, crispy churros. Then there’s the use of sweetened condensed milk in dishes such as flan, a smooth and silky yet light custard. Milk and cream appear in simple bread doughs and as a flavor for tres leches cake, which literally translated into English is “three milks cake.” It’s made with whole milk, condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream.
Many of the goods found in a Mexican bakery really are sweet breads (pan dulce), a classification for a number of Hispanic pastries. The dough is simple, containing flour, yeast, sugar, butter, and condensed milk, and yet it rises carefully to create fluffy, light treats such as pan de elote, a traditional sweet corn bread, or concha, a sweet bread that comes in rolls intricately decorated through cuts made in the dough. In order to make conchas, one must carefully weigh all the ingredients to ensure proper proportions, just as when baking any bread. The colorful topping of the concha actually is made from shortening, flour, and confectioners’ sugar, combined into a paste and pressed into a flat disk. This is laid over each of the rolls and cut into a design that becomes the topping for the cooked sweet bread.
Ready to try your hand at one of these dulce (sweet) delights? Check out this tres leches cake recipe from Las Palomas!
Freelance writer Le‘a Gleason is as fascinated by family-owned bakeries as she is by the food-growing movement; it’s all food from the heart. Her favorite homemade Mexican treat is churros served with caramel sauce.
Panaderia Las Palomas
814 S. Wells Ave., Reno
775-323-1881 • Renomexicanrestaurant.com
Tres Leches Cake
(courtesy of Maria Perez, co-owner, Panadería Las Palomas in Reno. Makes 1 double-layer, 12-inch round cake)
For the cake
8 ounces (1 cup) eggs
1½ cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 cup vegetable oil
1½ cups whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
For the icing
3 cups whipping cream
½ cup sugar
1 cup whole milk
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
Coconut flakes (for decoration)
Maraschino cherries, halved and drained
Combine sugar and eggs in a mixer for 4 minutes at medium speed. Add oil and mix for 3 more minutes. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in separate bowl and stir until distributed evenly, then add to liquid mixture with vanilla. Mix 5 more minutes.
Coat 2, 12-inch round baking pans lightly with oil and fill about ⅔ full with batter. Bake at 350 degrees F until light brown (about 30 minutes). Remove from oven and let cool completely. Turn out onto a wire rack, and place rack on top of a lined baking sheet. Using a sharp knife, slice off the rounded top from one of the layers, creating a flat disc. This will be the bottom layer. Set aside.
Whip whipping cream in a mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form (5 to 8 minutes), then add sugar and whip again into stiff peaks. Chill in refrigerator until slightly stiff (about 30 minutes).
During this time, combine whole and condensed milks, then pour over both cake layers until soaked through. Carefully transfer bottom layer (with top removed) onto a cake serving dish.
When whipped cream is fully chilled, use it to frost the bottom layer of the cake generously. Place the second layer on top and frost the entire cake, then sprinkle with coconut flakes. Top with halved maraschino cherries in any design you like.
