Pastel de Cándida, Cándida's Pie -- a Pinedo recipe

It's time for another Pinedo recipe!  This time my sweet tooth was working hard on my thoughts, so I picked a dessert recipe.  I looked through the pie section and chose one that looked intriguing.  It is on pages 181 - 182 and another copy is on page 188.

Cándida's pie.

Boil a kettle cup of sugar and a half of milk: let it boil until the state of cajeta.

           The pies are made with rich dough and after they are cooked, the inside of them is filled with the cajeta, smearing them with fresh cream and sprinkling them with walnuts and almonds ground in the mortar.

         Put the pies in the oven right away to dry.

Cándida's pie.

         Boil a kettle cup of very rich milk with another cup of sugar to the point of cajeta. After cooking, the pie crusts are covered with the milk mixture. They are spread with fresh cream and sprinkled with walnuts and clean almonds broken in the mortar.

         Place the pies in the oven for five to ten minutes to dry and brown.

This recipe has a person's name on it -- and I wish I knew who Cándida was.  But it is interesting, too, to know that cándida also translates to "white", which the pie is when you pour cream over the top, or it translates to "candy", which describes the filling.

To give you fair notice, I failed making this recipe.  In the verdict section below, I will give you my recommendations on how to make it that may not fail.

My Redaction

64 ounces whole milk (too much!)

128 ounces sugar

1 pie crust to cover a 9-inch pie pan (you can do an 8-inch pan, too), pre-baked

Fresh cream, about 1/4 cup

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and almonds.

Don't use all that milk

Boil the milk and sugar together until it gets thick, somewhere between the thread stage (230 degrees F) and the soft ball stage (240 degrees F).  Let cool until spreadable, not runny hot.

Pour the filling in the baked crust.  Spread it around and level the surface.

Pour enough cream over the top to make a thin layer.  Sprinkle with nuts.

Put the pie into the oven to dry it.  I used a warm oven for 20 minutes.

My Notes

Pinedo suggests either a 2-to-1 ratio of sugar to milk (in the first recipe) or a 1-to-1 ratio (in the second recipe).  I decided to use the 2-to-1 ratio.  

I also (foolishly) chose to start with 1/2 gallon of milk, when I should have, more likely, used 2 cups.  I wasn't sure how much the mixture would reduce to during cooking, and I am still not sure what volume a kettle cup holds. 

The idea of cooking to the state of cajeta means to make a thick mixture.  This mixture of only milk and sugar matches the more modern cajeta recipes, which makes a caramel often called dulce de leche.  That is what I set out to do.

I have previously attempted to make a cajeta and was reasonably successful (see this post).  I have read advice online to cook it in an uncovered slow-cooker.  I started my milk and sugar mixture this way.  It barely fit in the slow-cooker, and after 6 hours of it cooking on high, there was no change in the mixture other than the sugar being dissolved and it was a little foamy.  I thought that at this rate, it would take days to get the mixture thick.

In the beginning

After six hours

So I put it in my Dutch oven on the stove, brought it to a boil, and let it slowly boil.  I was surprised when it overflowed the pan.  When hot, the mixture expanded a lot!

Not the Dutch oven but still had issues with it boiling over.

Then I moved half the volume to another pan, brought both pans to a simmer, and let them cook until they reached the soft-ball stage.  I kept checking their temperatures and doing a cold water test, and I wasn't convinced they would thicken well until I got it to the soft-ball stage.

Once spread in the crust, the mixture was tacky but not very sticky to the touch.  

I poured on the cream and decided to cover the whole surface well with the nuts.  I used about an equal mixture of walnuts and almonds.

My oven was heated to warm, and I left the pie in there for 20 minutes.  I could not tell if the cream had dried or browned, but the nuts appeared to have absorbed much of the cream.

I let the pie cool before serving.

The Verdict

There was a lot of leftover filling, which I spread into shallow, foil-lined casserole dishes.  This filling crystallized as it cooled, turning into a candy that was harder than fudge but not truly hard.  I could break it up with a knife into chunks, although sometimes the chunks shattered.  

This did not bode well for the pie filling.  So I was not surprised that its filling was also very firm.  Disappointing, because I expected (well, hoped for) a softer filling.  At least it didn't all flow off the crust when I cut it.

I still ate some of it.  It was tasty but too sweet, really.  The firm filling was too firm, so sometimes I warmed it up in the microwave.  This melted the filling a little and made it more like a pie.  (Careful!  It can burn your mouth!)

I liked the cream on top and I especially liked the nuts, which toned down the sweetness.  Sometimes I poured more cream on top as I was serving it, which also helped tone down the sweetness.  My guest taster loved the pie even with the hard filling, which surprised me.

It has to be declared as a failure, though.  The filling was supposed to be soft.  I expected it to be sweet but not THAT sweet.  Perhaps the 1-to-1 ratio would have been better.

The extra filling candy went to my work and was shared with many people.  One woman, born and raised in Mexico, noted that she has had that candy before -- so I know I am not the only person who has crystallized dulce de leche.  It makes a good candy in small doses.  People commented that they were surprised it was only made of milk and sugar.  It was brown and rich, and made me think it had vanilla in it.  

So how would I fix the filling?  

If I wanted to make the filling from scratch, I would use perhaps 2 cups of milk and 2 to 4 cups of sugar.  This would cook faster and not have such an opportunity to crystallize when cooling.  (Although you wouldn't have the extra candy!)  I'm not sure if I would stop it at the thread stage or take it to the soft-ball stage.  More experimentation is needed.

Or I could buy two cans of sweetened condensed milk and boil them unopened for a few hours while completely submerged in water.  Once they are cooled (in the water), they can be opened.  The internet recommends this, but you do have to be careful to keep the cans submerged.  I have done this in the past, and it makes a good creamy caramel filling.

Or I could buy cans of dulce de leche.  

I would make my choice based on how much of a hurry I was.  Keep in mind this makes a very sweet pie.  The cream does help, and you can pour a thicker layer if you'd like.  You can also choose how much coverage you want with the nuts.  I covered the cream layer completely.  If you want to show the color contrast between the cream and the nuts, use fewer.  That is assuming drying the pie in the oven keeps the cream white.

Officially, a failure, but all was not lost.

Lebkuchen or German Honey Cake, the 1553 edition

After having attempted and, finally, succeeded in making German Honey Cakes via Laura Ingalls Wilder (click on these posts to view the saga: attempt #1, attempts #2 and #3, and success at last), I decided to try a 1553 recipe for Nurnberger Lebkuchen as found in the Sabina Welserin cookbook, Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin, as translated by David Friedman.  Click here to see the translation.

What makes lebkuchen special is that the baked cookies are said to last a long time without spoiling, staying moist and flavorful.  Also, the dough does not have fat or eggs, so it can be stored unbaked for months and even years, and it supposed to develop a better flavor with time.  It was an item of wealth in medieval times, where bakers would invest money in jars and ingredients, and mature dough was given in dowries.

My goal was to make the dough with the intent to let it rest and mature for many months.  I'm not sure how long, and I might do some test baking along the way to assess any changes.  Here is the part of the recipe I was using:

163 To make Nürnberger Lebkuchen

Take one quart of honey, put it into a large pan, skim it well and let it boil a good while.  Put one and a half pounds of sugar into it and stir it continually with a wooden spatula and let it cook for a while, as long as one cooks an egg, pour it hot into a quarter pound of flour, stir it around slowly and put the described spices in the dough, stir it around slowly and not too long; take on and a half ounces of cinnamon sticks, one and a half ounces of nutmeg, three fourths of an ounce of cloves, three ounces of ginger, a pinch of mace, and chap or grind each one separately so that they are not too small, the cinnamon sticks, especially, should be coarsely ground.  And when you have put the spices in the dough, then let the dough set for as long as one needs to hard boil eggs.

I gathered my ingredients and had at it.

My Redaction

1 quart honey (about 3 pounds)

1 1/2 pounds sugar

1/4 pound flour

2 ounces ground cinnamon (see my notes, below)

1 1/2 ounces ground nutmeg

3/4 ounce ground cloves

2 1/2 ounces ground ginger (see my notes, below)

a pinch of mace

And the mace.

My Notes

It did not go well.

First, and I take responsibility for this decision, I boiled the honey and the honey-sugar mixture too long.  I made a hard-crack candy that in no way resembled a dough.  Afterwards, I read more about lebkuchen and now believe the honey should be heated to just boiling for two reasons:  to dissolve the sugar and to make it easier to mix in the flour.  But no cooking beyond that seems necessary.

Despite all my planning and shopping, I discovered I only had 2 1/2 ounces of ginger, so I used that and put in another 1/2 ounce of ground cinnamon in its place.  The entire amount of spices was a lot!  It turns out it was too much.  More on that below.

Almost 7 ounces of spices by weight

I was skeptical about the amount of flour.  It seemed like it was not enough to actually make a dough.  I was right:  what I ended up with was a vat of goo, not dough.  It was still goo even after mixing in the spices.

Mixing in the flour.

Mixing in the spices.

I put the goo into a jar to let it cool, then thought about how I would address the problem.

Note the total amount that was made.

Yes, I ended up with a solid mass in the glass jar (why did I put it in the jar???).  Clearly this was not the intended result.  

So I put the jar into a pan filled with hot water and put some more water on top of the solid mass in the jar.  After letting it heat for a while, the mass softened enough that I was able to pour it out of the jar and into a saucepan.  

A low heat allowed the mass to dissolve into the water, then I brought it to a boil and cooked it until it was nearly at the thread stage, about 220 degrees Fahrenheit.  It seemed to resist getting hotter, and I didn't want to scorch it.

Then I mixed in more flour.  I lost track of how much flour it was -- I just kept adding flour and mixing until the mass started clinging to itself more and acting like a dough.

This made a very dark dough, and I took two small balls of it and baked it on a greased pan in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. 

The cookies smelled good and were baked just right.  However, they tasted awful:  all I got was a too-strong spice flavor that was decidedly unpleasant.  

I didn't want to throw it away and declare a failure.  It seemed that I just needed to dilute the spices to get a better cookie.

So I added about three more pounds of honey and one cup of sugar, heated to just boiling, and mixed in well.  Then I added more flour, mixing in a cup at a time until I couldn't stir it by hand any more.  At that point I put big scoops of the almost-dough onto the counter and mixed in more flour by hand (gently kneading) until I had a soft, almost sticky dough.

Huge!  I guess it weighed about 10 pounds.

I baked two more cookies.  They were lighter in color than the awful ones, and their taste was much better.  The spices were still strong but not repellant.  The cookies were moist and lightly browned on the edges.  I decided that was enough.

What a color difference.

It was a huge amount of dough.  I filled two jars with it, then baked the rest:  I rolled the dough to about 1/4 inch thick, used a cutter to get the cookies, then baked them in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 7 minutes, which was right because they were thinner than the hand-formed balls I practiced with.  Notice that I did not follow the given directions (see the Friedman webpage) for baking them.  Maybe I will at another time.

Rolling and cutting

Baked.

Dough for storing.

The Verdict

The cookies were good.  Not mouth-wateringly spectacular, but good.  I think they would be improved with the chocolate frosting (see the Wilder post attempt #1) or a simple white frosting decoration.  They also seem to ask to be eaten with coffee or tea, or dunked in milk.  They were moist, not crisp, and I might try baking them longer to see if I like crisp.

I took four cookies and baked them at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.  This made them hard (not really crunchy or crisp) and not comfortable to eat.  Then I brushed them with rose water and let them dry.  This improved the flavor but were still to hard to eat comfortably.

I also took two baked cookies and brushed them on both sides with rose water, then let them dry.  My guest taster and I both agreed that this new flavor improved the cookie eating experienced.  I recommend it!

The dough jars were covered with a lid and put into a cool, dark cupboard, along with a box of the cookies.  Everything had the date written on them, and I put notes on my calendar to check on them.

When I check in on them, I will report back.

I declare this a success.  It took a lot of effort and perseverance to achieve it, but I believe I did.  Part of the effort was all the clean up:  every pan and utensil had sticky goo on it, as did the counters and stovetop.  Fortunately, it was all sugar-based goo, which cleans up completely with hot water and patience. 

Now I will apply more patience while the dough and the cookies mature.

Whew!