Me and polvorosas had a love affair. These tiny, soft, crumbling cookies took over my life everytime there were around. My abuela and Aunt Mary used to make them for me. Everytime I come to visit they knew they had to have polvorosas for me. And not a few but LOTS of polvorosas. I would buy them in other places but none was as good as the ones from my abuela’s house.
Polorosas are cookies made with shortening, wheat flour and lots of sugar. They’re baked to perfection: crispy on the bottom but they pulverize, becoming dust on top. The word Polvorosas stems from the word polvo, which means dust. What I loved doing when I would eat one was using my two front teeth to scrap the top of the cookie – the dusty part – and then finish off by eating the crispy bottom.
One day I was old enough to learn to make them. My abuela sat me down and in a big pot added the ingredients one by one. And with my hands I started mixing and knighting until the dough was soft. The secret of these cookies is in the knighting. The longer you do it the ‘dustier’ they are on top.
Gabriela Flores is a culinary nutritional expert, food coach and a wellness enthusiast. She’s the co-founder and kitchen goddess at Bliss B4 Laundry: Inspirational Events for Mind, Body, and Soul. She’s made it a mission to find ways to transform the human body from deprivation to abundance. Her passion is food: to get in the kitchen and experiment with new ingredients to make them delicious, nourishing and extract their power to heal.