We pay less attention to sweets than they deserve. We take them at the end of a meal, for dessert, or on a whim when we stroll through the city center on a Sunday. We only take sugar seriously to criticize it, and too often we forget that much of the greatness of a gastronomy is in its sweets section.
In the case of Catalan food, this is undoubtedly the case. With a menu of typical desserts born from peasant traditions, convent sweets and Arab inheritance, Catalan sweets are a delight, with a sample that goes from cakes to chocolates, through sweets based on dried fruits and desserts with cheese included.
You may already know in depth the salty part of our gastronomy, but if you have not yet immersed yourself in the sweet, we bring you a list of the best traditional Catalan desserts to start doing it. And if you are already an expert on the subject, we want to hear your voice, gulafre, and for you to explain to us which Catalan sweets should also be on this list.
Mel i mató, the Catalan version of the cheese cart.
Few desserts are simpler and wiser combinations than a cheese with a sweet. Before we learned to assemble French cheese boards accompanied by quince, a Catalan dessert was born with the deep wisdom hidden in traditional things. Cheese and honey, two basic and common products, united to create a dessert that is, without a doubt, a symbol of Catalanness: Mel i Mató.
The name sure helps. It seems almost like a little poem, an edible version of the saying “one lime and one sand”. Mel i Mató, the caress of sweetness and the fresh and acid contudence of a cheese. The mató, by the way, resembles the recuit, but they are not the same. Although they are made in similar ways, curdling the milk and straining it through a cloth (like ricotta), mató is originally made from goat’s milk and recuit from sheep’s milk.
And although nowadays both are usually made with cow’s milk, few of us think of many nuances when we see it on the menu. If mel i mató appears, the success of the dessert is assured. And if it comes with a handful of walnuts, the result sends us directly to the Catalan sweet heaven.
Catànies, the original Ferrero Rocher.
If there is something addictive in this life, it’s catànies. Maybe because they are small and so it is easier to lose control. We owe them to the town of Vilafranca del Penedès and they are little balls made of almond paste, hazelnut, milk, cocoa and sugar. Inside, a toasted and caramelized marcona almond. It’s hard not to bite into them.
Like mel i mató, they are a good summary of the simple and brilliant origin of many sweet traditions in Catalonia: chocolate (let’s not forget our relationship with it) for the sweet and nuts for the crunchy. As the former Barça coach Ronald Koeman used to say in his macaronic Spanish:“You don’t need to say anything else”.
Turrón de Agramunt, the nougat, nougat, nougat
It is one of the best nougat in Catalonia, and we are lucky to have it in Barcelona. It has been made since the seventeenth century in the same way, carefully handcrafted in the village of Agramunt in the Urgell region. Forget Jijona, and look towards the province of Lleida, where one of its villages produces one of the most popular nougats in Catalonia.
From there, in fact, is Torrons Vicens, one of the most popular brands, specialized, now, in strange nougats. And although, in principle, it is something typical of Christmas, we have become accustomed to eat them at any time of year, and is one of those typical sweets ideal for gifts and take a good piece of Catalonia wherever you go.
Borregos de Cardedeu, breakfast of champions
Since 1770 the recipe for borregos has been made with care in the bakeries of Cardedeu. With the bread dough, thin and long sticks are made, which are then smeared with water and oil and baked until golden brown. Then it is cut into slices of considerable thickness and put back in the oven.
If you want to try it at home, we invite you to venture out because the recipe is very simple and you will only need flour, sugar, butter, yeast, oil, salt, eggs and matalahúva. And if you want the full experience, we recommend you to dip them in wine or milk as a snack or breakfast, and feel, all at once, like a pagés ready for any country feina.
Panellets, an Arab dessert for a Christian party
Gastronomy always has a genealogical tree, a journey through history that explains where the dish we eat comes from. Although it is difficult to determine its birth, panellets are a good example of the Arab presence in the Peninsula. Sugar, nuts, lemon? Is there much difference between a Catalan panellet and those Arab sweets full of sugar that are sold in the pastry shops of the Raval?
The most curious thing is that the traditional Catalan dessert that brings us closer to Arab culture is also the most representative of one of the most important Christian festivals: Easter. The big day of the panellet is All Saint’s Day, where this typical sweet fills the bakeries of the city. Such a typical dessert, by the way, also had to have its contest, so if you are curious, in Barcelona you have a place where the best ones are made.
Catalan cream
What are we going to tell you about the crema catalana at this point that you don’t already know? Well, although it may not seem like it, there are always new things to learn from one of our star dishes. To avoid getting too long, we leave you a link to this post with some curiosities about it.
Of course, we’ll tell you one of them, so that no one confuses you: crema catalana is not the same as the French creme brulée. The differences are small, but essential. Catalan crème brulée uses milk and French crème brulée uses cream. The former is prepared in a saucepan and has some citric touches and the latter is finished in a bain-marie and has some liqueur. On the last difference we have no proof, but we have no doubts either: the Catalan cream is richer than its French twin.
Carquinyolis, crac! goodbye to your teeth!
The name carquinyoli is an onomatopoeia that warns us of its consistency. This dry, hard cookie cracks when it breaks, and although it never actually breaks a tooth (or it shouldn’t), its consistency and almond pieces inside keep you on your toes, and beg you to dip this dessert in milk or coffee.
They are very easy to make. You only need flour, almonds, sugar and egg, although you can also add lemon peel and cinnamon. They have a texture similar to toast as they are made with the same technique as biscote and it is very popular, as mentioned above, to dip them in coffee.
Cocas, the Catalan pizza
If we don’t have much to tell you about the crema catalana that you don’t already know, with the coca we find ourselves in more or less the same situation. There is a reason why both have earned the fame of being the most representative sweets of our land and their names sound, even if only by hearsay, beyond our borders. If you want to continue investigating about them you can take a look at these curiosities, it is not going to be less.
The greatness of one of the most typical and representative Catalan desserts is its versatility. Coca is sweet, but also salty. Spongy or crunchy. This chameleon-like dough serves as a starter, main course, dessert and snack, depending on the format in which you eat it. In short, a master invention of Catalan confectionery whose best version, if you want to try it, is made in Barcelona.
Tortell de reis, childhood in a sweet
It is our particular king cake, although we give it a touch of marzipan to make it more consistent (and yes, more filling). What does not change is the traditional day to eat them, January 6th.
In Catalonia it’s crazy, and few desserts are sold more on just one day a year. Roscón ice creams, sugar-free roscones, lists of the best roscón…. With a somewhat anxious obsession, our country gives itself over to this sweet during the week it is due, with the voracity of those who know that the idyll will soon be over. It seems exaggerated, but once you try one (perhaps now it is many months away) you will understand the reason for all this enthusiasm.
Braç de gitano, a bad name for a delicious dessert.
Someday we will talk about the very curious legend that circulates in Barcelona about the origin of the brazo de gitano, but as we do not have space or time in this entry we will limit ourselves to say that it is impossible to conceive it without that layer of caramelized or powdered sugar (according to the tradition of each one) that covers it.
In the filling, however, there are two teams: team chocolate and team cream. Their presence in traditional Catalan pastry shops is obligatory, and their color, with the white of the dough and filling and the golden brown sugar on the surface, is a clear summary of the palette of colors used by the most classic Catalan pastry shops.
Pa de pessic, our sponge cake.
Egg and flour are the star ingredients of this sweet, first cousin of the sponge cake. That and sugar, lemon and butter end up completing one of the most substantial sweets on the list. So much so that a single piece can fill more than one person. By the way, there are also chocolate ones. I say nothing and I say everything.
The name, by the way, already indicates the vice it provokes. The pa de pessic (bread to pinch), was distributed in the processions and people, unable to wait to get home, did with the cake the same thing that is done with the tip of the bread, pinch a little piece to calm hunger.
Neulas, the sweet cane to sip the cava.
It is a good complement to other sweets although they can also work perfectly on their own. It is from the wafer family and typical of Christmas, although much lighter and with a different flavor. They are made with flour, pork lard, sugar, flour, egg white and lemon peel.
There are records of this typical sweet in Catalan recipe books from the Middle Ages, and although they are not the most common in our day to day, they are a fixed in the sample of Christmas desserts. Of course, what they surely did not expect in the Middle Ages when they talked about this sweet is that its most common use a few centuries later would be the one we give it nowadays in celebrations: to dip the neula in a glass of cava.
Chuchos or Xuixos, the star of Girona.
In New York, home of the cronut and other sweet dementias, the city where sugar deliriums are crowned and people queue up for a square croissant, they already know: the xuixo is the bomb. The typical sweet of Girona, a brioche dough filled with pastry cream, fried and covered with sugar can be tasted in the Little Spain market in the U.S. city, demonstrating with this trip that this Catalan delicacy has little to envy to other world famous buns.
Born, it seems, around 1918 in a workshop of a confectionery opened in 1912 in the street of the Royal Court of Girona run by Emili Puig Burch, the sweet was gaining success during the twentieth century, declined in the early twenty-first century, and has now regained strength thanks to some awards that point to the best Xuixo of the year, giving back to the gironins in particular, and the Catalans in general, a way forward. By the way, a silly secret: the xuixo is fried with the cream already inside the bun, it is not worth putting it in afterwards.
If you want to try this sweet, we’ll give you two places: Pastisseria Triomf, located in Poblenou in Barcelona, is the last winner of the award for the Millor Xuixo del Món, and produces more than 800 a day to meet the demand. The other, a classic: El Xuixo de Can Castelló, located in Girona, which is the first store in Catalonia specialized in the typical sweet of Girona, with extravagant flavors such as sweet butifarra, and the most demanded ones such as cream, apple and chocolate.
Tap de Cadaqués
Like those who return with ensaimadas from Mallorca, it is not uncommon to see Catalans returning from their getaway in Cadaqués with a box full of a curious sweet in the shape of a cava cork.That sweet is the Tap de Cadaqués, a delicious traditional sweet typical of the coastal town whose history dates back to the 18th century and which owes its name to its shape.
The sweet, very basic (eggs, flour, sugar and yeast), gets its shape by being baked using special molds or by adapting aluminum flan molds. Once baked, these sponge cakes are lightly dipped in syrup and sprinkled with powdered sugar, creating a wonderful snack that has already left the boats to become a souvenir and also a staple of the local gastronomy, with fine dining restaurants serving it as well, often accompanied by elaborate rum, coffee and cinnamon sauces.