Kitchen Secrets with Our Cuban Chef – Torticas de Morón

A tortica de Morón is a small round cookie that breaks instead of bending. Press one and it gives way in a clean snap, then goes sandy on the tongue and disappears. There is no chew in it anywhere. That texture comes from lard and from a light hand with the flour, and it is the entire point of the cookie.

Plenty of them are left plain. The version in this recipe has a dab of guava paste sunk into the middle. The guava softens in the oven, turns glossy, then cools back into something between jam and candy. Against a plain, faintly limey shortbread it does exactly what a filling should do: it stops the cookie being one note.

They are also easy. No rolling pin, no cutters, no piping bag. The dough comes together in about ten minutes, and the only thing it asks of you is a rest in the fridge before it goes near heat.

Where the tortica gets its name

Morón is a town in Ciego de Ávila, in the middle of Cuba. A bronze rooster stands near the entrance to it, and the town has carried the nickname of the rooster for a long time — the phrase came over from Morón de la Frontera in Andalusia, along with a great many other things. “Tortica” is just the diminutive of torta: a little cake, a small flat thing. The cookie wears the town’s name the way a cheese wears a region’s, and in Cuba nobody needs the rest of the sentence explained.

The cookie itself belongs to an older family. Spanish bakers brought mantecados and polvorones across the Atlantic — short, crumbly, lard-based sweets built to keep well in a warm climate — and Cuban kitchens adapted them the way they adapted everything else, with what grew nearby. Lime does the work that almond and cinnamon do in Spain. The result is drier and brighter than its Andalusian relatives, and much less perfumed.

How the guava ended up in the middle is harder to pin down, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we can say is where you find it: in bakery cases in Havana, in Miami, and in Tampa, where Cuban baking has had a home for well over a century. Guava paste already sits in every one of those kitchens. It goes into the pastelitos, it goes on the cheese plate, it gets sliced straight off the block for children. Putting a cube of it into a thumbprint was never a long leap.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (205 g) lard, soft but still cool to the touch
• 3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lime zest, from about 2 limes
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups (315 g) plain flour, spooned and levelled
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 3 oz (85 g) guava paste, cut into 24 cubes about 1/2 inch square
• Icing sugar, for dusting (optional)

How to make torticas de Morón

1. Beat the lard and sugar together for 3 to 4 minutes, until the mixture turns pale and holds a soft peak on the beater. Scrape the bowl down twice. This is where the cookie gets its lightness, so do not cut it short.
2. Add the egg yolk, lime zest, lime juice and vanilla, and beat for 30 seconds. The mixture may look slightly curdled at this point. That is the lime juice, and it corrects itself the moment the flour goes in.
3. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl, then add it in two goes on the lowest speed. Stop as soon as the last dry streak disappears, about 20 to 30 seconds of mixing in total. The dough will be soft and slightly greasy and should hold together when you squeeze a handful.
4. Cover the bowl and chill for 30 minutes. Cold lard is what keeps the edges from spreading. While it rests, heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and line two baking trays with parchment.
5. Roll the dough into 24 balls of about 30 g each and set them 2 inches apart, twelve to a tray. Press the back of a teaspoon into each one to make a well about 3/4 inch across with a rim about 1/4 inch thick. If the edges crack open, pinch them shut.
6. Press a cube of guava paste into each well so it sits level with the rim. Do not heap it. Guava that stands proud of the cookie will boil over the side and glue the whole thing to the paper.
7. Bake one tray at a time on the middle rack for 14 to 16 minutes, and keep the second tray in the fridge while the first one bakes. The tops stay pale; look instead for edges that have set and undersides that are just barely gold. The guava will be glossy and slightly puffed.
8. Let them sit on the tray for 10 minutes before you move them. Hot torticas break under their own weight, and the guava holds heat far longer than the cookie does. Transfer to a rack and give them another 20 minutes.
9. Dust with icing sugar once they are completely cool, if you want them that way. Stored airtight they keep for 5 days, and the crumb is better on day two than on day one.

Chef’s notes

• Lard temperature decides everything. It should dent under your thumb without smearing. If the kitchen is warm the dough goes slack, and slack dough spreads into flat greasy discs with no rim left to hold the fruit. Put it back in the fridge for 15 minutes rather than pushing on.
• The flour goes in last for a reason. Every extra turn of the beater after it lands builds gluten, and gluten is what takes a tortica from sandy to tough. Undermix rather than overmix. The dough finishes coming together in your hands as you roll it.
• Overfilled wells ruin the tray. Molten guava is very hot and very sticky, and any that escapes onto the parchment scorches long before the cookie is done. You will taste that burnt sugar in everything around it. Keep the cubes level and the wells shallow.
• They look underbaked when they are ready. Torticas set as they cool, not in the oven. If you wait for the tops to take colour you have gone two minutes too far, and the cookie reads as dry instead of short.

What to drink with a plate of them

Coffee, and strong. These cookies are sweet in a flat, direct way — sugar and fruit, no acidity to cut through — so they want something bitter opposite them. A small cup of Cuban espresso is the standard answer. If there are a few of you around the table, a colada poured out into thimble cups is the right shape for the occasion: two swallows each, one cookie each, and nobody is left holding a cold half cup. Café con leche works too, though the milk softens the contrast and you lose a little of the point.

On the plate, keep it plain. Torticas do not need a garnish and they do not sit well next to anything wet, because the crumb pulls moisture out of the air fast enough as it is. If you want to build a proper dessert around them, a wedge of firm white cheese beside the guava is the old pairing and still the best one — salt against sugar, soft against sandy. A wedge of flan on the side works, but serve them a little apart from each other so the cookies stay dry.

If you would rather not heat the oven

A tray of these is a good way to spend a Saturday morning, but it is not the only way to get to the same flavours. We are at 5555 S 78th Street in Tampa, open from 5am on weekdays, and the guava, the coffee and the rest of it are already on. The full menu is online for pickup and catering, so you can send the order ahead and have it waiting, or just come in and look at the case before you decide.