How to Make Rodrigo Cervantes’ Sweet, Historic Garibaldi Pastries

I am back on the pan dulce train, keep craving it, and pushing my wife to help me. But this time it’s personal. 

El Globo Panadería was established in Mexico City in 1884 by an Italian family of bakers. Without diving too much into history, Italy sucked at that time and the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz basically said: Love me some Europeans to modernise this country and make it chic. Which translated into the amalgam of pan dulce both by Italian and French immigrant families. This history lesson will make sense shortly, bear with me. Eventually the bakery was bought and passed along by conglomerates, the latest a rich Mexican (who may or may not have been on the Forbes rich list) who bought it and made it the McDonald’s of pan dulce for Mexican families. With inflated prices, there is now a franchise on every corner.

In any case, across the big range of pastries available at El Globo Panadería, one was king for my family: the Garibaldi. 

Whether a nod or a mock to the revolutionary Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, this little pastry carries weight. Think muffin-sized pound cake, brushed with apricot jam for acidity and moisture, then rolled in nonpareil sprinkles (those tiny sugar balls that crunch like childhood and never quite leave your teeth).

This week we made them at home for the kids and they were good…and let me say this… The kids did not try them.

THE RECIPE

115g unsalted butter at room temperature
220g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
200g plain flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
120g whole fat milk
1tsp vanilla extract or 1 whole vanilla bean
50g apricot jam
100g nonpareil sprinkles

METHOD 

Get the oven rolling at 180 C.

Whisk the butter and sugar until creamy. If you’ve got a stand mixer, hand mixer or some fancy equipment, life is easy for you. If not, then get those arms pumping. Start mashing the butter and sugar together with a fork, then move onto using a wooden spoon and scrape the sides; keep beating until the colour becomes lighter, probably some painful five minutes. 

Add the eggs one by one making sure each incorporates into the paste before adding the next one. Add the flour, making sure to pass it through a sieve to avoid lumps. Now add the baking powder and mix. Add the milk and mix well.

Use a baking mould for muffins and butter it up, then add the batter.

Bake for 18-20 mins, don’t forget to do the cake tester to make sure the little guys are cooked. (Sharp knife in to the middle, pull out and if nothing sticky is on the knife, then they’re done.) 

Take them out from the mould and let them cool off on a wire rack for five minutes.

Prepare a plate with sprinkles, ready to roll the garibaldis. 

But first, brush the cakes all over with the apricot jam and now roll them across the sprinkles until covered.

Now eat them before the kids show up.

Rodrigo Cervantes is from Mexico City, but lives in east London with his family. He is head chef and co-founder of Bad Manners. Read more of his work, including his series of Mexican recipes, on Something Curated here.

All photos by Rodrigo Cervantes.