Alcoy meat cakes, and the city that gives them their name

Natacha Sanz Caballero Breads, Desserts and Sweets Alcoi, Cabalgata de Reyes, fiestas de Moros y Cristianos, pastel de carne, Spanish festivities, sweet treats, Valencian cuisine

If you’ve been following Mama Ía blog for a while you know (and have heard me say more than once) that the recipes I post are quite simple. Spanish cuisine is not complicated and it doesn’t use a ton of ingredients, relying more on excellent ones cooked without many adornments.

Alcoy at night (photo credit: comunitatvalenciana.com)

Today’s recipe, Alcoy meat cakes, while not hard to make, is a bit more elaborate, so I have to warn you. It also requires the dough to sit in the fridge overnight, so it’s a recipe that you need two days to make. However, I can assure you that once you try one, you’ll see that the process is all worth it. Alcoy meat cakes are so delicious.

One would think that Alcoy meat cakes are a savory dish, because as its name implies, it includes meat (pork). But here comes the surprise: Alcoy meat cakes are a sweet, a dessert —sugar and cinnamon are main ingredients! Having said that, If you want to eat one or two as a lunch option, that is perfectly appropriate – I say it because I do it!

Sant Jordi Bridge, Alcoy

La Sierra de Mariola

La Font Roja (Photo credit: Generalitat Valenciana)

Modernist architecture in Alcoy (Alicante)

El Pou Clar in Onteniente, part of Sierra de Mariola

Alcoy meat cakes are a heritage of the Arab cuisine, dating back more that 11 centuries. Over time, Alcoy developed its own variation of the recipe, which includes pork meat and lard in its elaboration.

I’ve wanted to post the recipe for Alcoy meat cakes since the beginning of this blog. If I haven’t done it before it is because I didn’t have the recipe! As I’ve mentioned, it’s a bit elaborate, so it’s not something that people regularly make at home, rather, they buy the cakes already made at the bakery. But this is the other caveat: they are made at only two specialty bakeries in the city of Alcoy, Alicante, Spain.

Alcoy is the city where my dad‘s family comes from.

Three Kings Cavalcade in Alcoy (photo credit: Comunidad Valenciana)

Alcoy during the Three Kings Cavalcade (photo credit: Valencia News)

Meat cakes from El Campanar bakery

The colorful pageantry at the Moors and Christians Festival in Alcoy (photo credit: Info Festa)

The Moors and Christians Festival in Alcoy (photo credit: Alicante Press)

Christians at the Moors and Christians Festicval in Alcoy (photo credit: Alicante Press)

About the city of Alcoy

Alcoy (also seen spelled as Alcoi in the Valencian language) is an industrial and University city in the province of Alicante, Spain. The city has a very old history, with Neardenthal settlements vestiges dating back 60,000 years. The town was established in 1256 by king James I of Aragon, with the construction of a castle on a strategic position over the Serpis river, to secure the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Valencia during the Reconquista.

The city is flanked by two nature reserves, la Serra de Mariola and la Font Roja, and it has an outstanding medieval and Modernist heritage.

But Alcoy is also known by its two major celebrations, the Three Kings Cavalcade and the Moors and Christians Festival.

You’re probably familiar with three kings parades, celebrated in every city and town in Spain on the eve of January 6, commemorating the visit of the Magi to baby Jesus in Bethlehem. Well, it all originated in Alcoy, which holds the oldest Three Kings Cavalcade in Spain (I wrote a story about it, which you can read here).

The Moors and Christians Festival is celebrated in April, and it’s possibly the most important event of the year in Alcoy. The week long festivities are a symphony of music and color, with daily majestic parades involving many thousands of participants dressed in gear of the era and representing battles and victories.

The festival is dedicated to San Jorge, Saint George, a figure shrouded in ancestral traditions. It has been celebrated since the sixteenth century and commemorates a battle that took place in 1276. At that time, the city was on the border area with the territory dominated by the Muslims on the Iberian peninsula. There were frequent skirmishes between the two factions until, on 23 April 1276, the Arab troops of Al-Azraq attempted to storm the town. According to legend, San Jorge appeared during the battle and, thanks to his intervention, the Christian army won the day, forcing the Muslims to retreat and to never return. In thanks, the citizens of Alcoy made him their patron saint, promising to celebrate a festival in his honor each year.

My memories of eating Alcoy meat cakes come from my grandma, who would visit her hometown weekly and always came home with a package of the delicacies. The cakes came wrapped in beautiful silk paper, and they had to be warmed up on a skillet or in the oven before eating them. I remember enjoying half of one, sharing the other half with one of my sisters. This is a flavor I remember from my youth that I hadn’t been able to enjoy since my grandma passed away. It’s not that I haven’t been to Alcoy since, but that was a treat my grandma brought, so the memories of eating it are linked to the memories of my grandma.

And then, one day recently, I found a recipe. It was a pretty loose recipe, and an almost industrial one (huge quantities of the ingredients for many dozens of cakes!) so I’ve had to adjust it, and make it at home a few times to see what proportions, ingredients, and cooking times and temperatures best replicated the cakes here in the US. The recipe I’m sharing is my version of it, and while it doesn’t exactly replicate the original, it brings me back to when I had them in my hometown, brought from Alcoy by my grandma. I am happy to share the recipe with you.

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ALCOY MEAT CAKE

Pastel de Carne de Alcoy

Cuisine: Spanish, Valencian

Servings: 22

Author: Natacha Sanz Caballero, Mama Ía blog

Equipment

• Cookie sheets
• Stand up mixer

Ingredients

For the puff pastry:

• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 Lb lard + 3Tbs
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 cups flour

For the filling:

• 2 Lbs ground pork ideally, twice ground
• 1/3 Lb lard
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup pinenuts
• 1 1/2 Tbs ground cinnamon

For the cakes:

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 Tbs granulated sugar

Instructions

Make the puff pastry:

• In the bowl of a stand up mixer, beat the sugar with 1/2 Lb lard. Add the egg yolks and beat at medium speed.
• Next, alternate adding the water and the flour in batches, while continuing to beat, until you obtain an homogenous dough.
• On a floured surface, roll the dough into a log. Divide the log into 10 equal portions.
• In a small bowl, melt 3 Tbs lard (I use the microwave, about 30 seconds).
• Flour the surface again and form a ball with one of the portions. Flatten it with a rolling pin until it becomes very thin and about 12 inches in diameter. Dip a brush in the melted lard and brush the whole surface of the dough disc. Starting on one edge, roll the disk and set aside.
• Repeat the process with a second portion of dough. Once this second disk is brushed with melted lard, place the roll we had set aside on one edge of the new disc and roll. Set aside.
• Continue this process with the remaining portions of dough. The final log will be the size of a small baguette or loaf of bread. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper, cover with a kitchen towel and keep in the fridge overnight.

Make the filling:

• In a medium to large skillet, disolve the sugar in the water over medium heat. Add the ground pork and the lard and cook for about 30 minutes, stirring often. Stir in the pinenuts and the cinnamon and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat source and let cool down.

Make the cakes:

• Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
• Flour the work surface. Slice the dough into 1/2 inch slices. Working over the floured surface, flatten one of the slices with your fingers, then gently with a rolling pin to obtain a disk of about 5 inches.
• Place about 2 tablespoons of filling on one half of the disk, fold over the other half and close, pinching with your fingers. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and repeat the process with the remaining dough slices.
• Mix the sugar and the cinnamon and sprinkle the cakes, covering the whole surface. Place the tray in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden (check at the 15 minute mark)
• Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool down. Then wrap each cake in a square of tissue paper.
• To serve, reheat in the oven or in a skillet over low heat.

Notes

• This recipe makes 20 to 24 cakes depending on the size (mine are pretty irregular, as you can see), so you will need at least 2 or 3 cookie sheets to bake them
• All ovens are different, so check after 15 minutes of baking
• I cut 10x10 in squares of tissue paper to wrap each cake
• The cakes can be frozen by placing them in a freezer bag or plastic container.