Baking with Prize Ingredients: Mermelada de Tejocote & Piloncillo en Polvo

Prize Ingredients: (top left, then clockwise) dried Xoconostle (similar to prickly pear), Mermelada de Tejocote (Mexican hawthorn jam or fruit butter), Ate de Durazno (a densely concentrated jelly-like paste made from peaches) and Piloncillo en Polvo (fine-grained Mexican brown sugar). For a much better photo of these treasures, check out the August 20, 2010 entry of Mija Chronicles, by Lesley Tellez.

Where did these prize ingredients come from?

For most of the spring and summer of 2010, I toyed with the idea of starting a food blog accessible to the general (Internet) public. "Pro" arguments came to mind very quickly: Writing and cooking are two of my favorite activities. I have been writing privately about food, ingredient procurement, cooking, eating and food culture since I was in high school a gazillion years ago. Food blogging would be a natural for me.

The list of "cons" was much longer and much more intimidating. Besides a general lack of time (I have one part-time job teaching, one full-time job as an administrative assistant, and occasional Saturday gigs as a test room supervisor), I also suffer from a moderate but sometimes paralyzing fear of "performing" in public.

It was while I was doing research on other food blogs, looking at who was already writing about food online, that I stumbled onto one of my favorite blogsites, The Mija Chronicles. As writer Lesley Tellez describes herself, she is a third-generation Mexican American who moved from Texas to Mexico City. Reading about Lesley's on-going expatriate experience (in the land of the food she is writing about) as the backdrop to a blog about one of my own favorite world cuisines is pure "win."

A few weeks after I started reading The Mija Chronicles, its creator held a contest. The "sweet" prize package included all of the items in the photo above. I have never "won" anything like this before, but on August 23rd, intrigued by the contest's writing prompt, I entered the contest by answering the question, What is your favorite Mexican food memory, and why?
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As pure random chance, luck of the draw, would have it, my entry won. Within a week or so, I was in possession of food products that I had never seen, hear about, or tasted before. I started researching cactus fruit and "forbidden" Mexican crabapples...or were they hawthorns? (Are hawthorns and crab apples related?) ... as well as the history of fruit leather ...  while also wandering through cookbooks looking for new recipe ideas.

This kind of research is heaven for me. What fun! Clearly, the Universe's answer to my question about starting a food blog was something like, Just do it, Mel!

Marmelada de Tejocote Crumb Cake

I opened the jar of Marmelada de Tejocote right away and spread some of the jam on a piece of toast. The flavor was that of an intense apple butter. If you've ever had homemade apple butter, you'll know what I mean when I say this stuff is comforting, deeply satisfying. The manufacturer of this particular product, Savia, uses 70% fruit and totally organic ingredients.

Most sources refer to tejocote as Mexican hawthorn, although some sources call it a crab apple. Without going into great scientific detail, crab apples and hawthorns are closely related, both belonging to the same family of plants, the rose family (Rosaceae), which includes over 2,300 species. Whether to translate Mermelada de Tejocote as "Mexican Crab Apple Butter" or "Mexican Hawthorn Butter" is probably a silly distinction. In any case, this delightful fruit spread is The Bomb!

As I was looking for a way to showcase this "prize" ingredient, I hit on the idea of a breakfast cake. I adapted a simple crumb cake recipe, replacing the white sugar with another prize ingredient, Piloncillo en Polvo (fine grain brown sugar), and adding a thin layer of Marmelada de Tejocote. The fine-grained Mexican brown sugar, by the way, did not pack down because it has less moisture that American commercial brown sugar. Its flavor, however, is deep and flavorful, hinting of molasses.

I took a least a dozen photos of this slice as well as the whole crumb cake, but could not get a one that shows the ribbon of jam. Believe me, it was there!

Ingredients
For the cake:

• 3/4 cup piloncillo en polvo (or white sugar)
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup Marmelada de Tejocote (a good substitute would be apple butter, but any kind of fruit spread would probably work)

Mix together the sugar and butter until well creamed, then add and incorporate the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, into the mixture. Next, add and incorporate the milk. Finally, add in the baking powder and all-purpose flour bit by bit. The dough will be stiffer than normal cake batter.

Spread 2/3rds of the mixture into a well-greased 9-inch pie or cake pan. Spread marmelada de tejocote  over the dough, using the back of a spoon to distribute the jam evenly. Top with the last of the cake dough, dropped by teaspoonfuls on top. 

Sprinkle crumble topping (recipe below) over the top to the cake and bake in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 40 minutes, or until done. 

For the crumb topping, mix together until crumbly:

• 1/2 cup piloncillo en polvo (or brown sugar)
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 cup butter

All in all, this was a very successful experiment in baking. The crumb cake was wonderful, although I think that it would have been just as wonderful without the crumb topping (but that may just be the anti-sweet tooth in me whining).

Other "prize ingredients" from Mexico will be featured here in the next few days.