A common aspect of all Father’s Day celebrations is to top off family meals with a succulent sweet bite. In Spain there is a wide variety of traditional desserts with which the festival of San José is commemorated. Below, we discover the most typical recipes with which, yes or yes, you should honor your father this day and add a sweet note to this party.
This sweet is perhaps the most widespread preparation in our country on this date, with special roots in the Valencian Community – where the Big Day of the Fallas is also celebrated today – and other areas of the Levant. It is a rounded fist-shaped bun, whose dough is fried and then sprinkled with sugar. You can use normal dough or enriched with pumpkin or any other chopped fruit. It is believed that this dessert has its origins in the Roman Empire and that it was later maintained among the popular classes of Al-Andalus, who fried the flour dough and dipped it in boiling honey.
This dessert, typical of Catalonia, is based on a pastry cream or custard with a crunchy caramelized sugar crust. Its preparation is similar to that of a flan and this sweet has its origin in a convent of nuns who, when the bishop visited, prepared a flan that did not set. Faced with this situation, the nuns mixed it with cornstarch, put it in the oven and toasted the caramel on top.
These are a kind of tea pastries, with butter, almonds and an exquisite chocolate and icing sugar coating after being baked. Similar to Tolosa cigarettes, this typical sweet from the Basque Country and Navarra has a corkscrew shape reminiscent of wood shavings, in homage to San José’s profession as a carpenter.
Another dessert with origins in the Roman Empire are St. Joseph donuts, known in Italy as Zeppole di San Giussepe. These are rings made with a dough of egg, flour, yeast and anise that is then fried or baked. Normally, sugar is sprinkled and the hole is filled with pastry cream to put the finishing touch to this preparation. In Valladolid they are known as Ciegas de Íscar.
This is the sweet of the Murcian garden par excellence, made from lemon leaves covered with a dough of flour, milk and egg. Like fritters, they are fried and then sprinkled with sugar or cinnamon.