“Let’s be honest. There are acceptable whispers, heavenly whispers and as the writer Josep Maria Fonalleras well said, there are ‘oily monsters made of cardboard'”, explains Joan Soldevila Adán, author of this photograph for Las Fotos de Los Lectores de La Vanguardia.
There is nothing monstrous about the popular Girona cream xuixo. What’s more, this question arises: Is this the most famous dessert in this city? At least, it is surely one of the most recognized and with the most history.
Known as xuixo, it is the dessert that with only three ingredients manages to have a delicious flavor: puff pastry, puffed pastry cream and sugar.
It is a type of cake where the puff pastry is characterized by being crunchy and is filled with soft and sweet pastry cream, which provides a pleasant contrast with the crunchy texture of the dough. As can be seen in the photograph, the xuixo ??is sprinkled with icing sugar or granulated sugar, which gives the sweet a tasty touch.
Xuixo was born in Girona at the beginning of the 20th century, when a French confectioner, whose name is unknown, helped the pastry chef Emili Puig create the recipe. The first told him about chou à la crème, what in Spain would be a Lyonnaise filled with cream, which he ended up developing into the genuine xuixo.
The birth of this dessert would be in 1918. In fact, a century later, in 2018, the Girona City Council organized the Any del Xuixo with the purpose of reclaiming and disseminating this dessert.
