A sugary selection with stops from north to south and from east to west
“You’d be surprised how much chocolate monkeys what we sell in Madrid. The figures are higher than those of some of the stores I have in Barcelona”. The pastry chef Oriol Balaguer (with various points of sale in both cities) explains how Madrid, one of the few bastions that remained without surrendering to the tradition of chocolate figures or Easter cakes, is changing in recent times. ‘The times they are a-changing’, as Bob Dylan would say.
But, is there a tradition of monkeys beyond Catalonia? If we change the name to others, we can find that there are many regions of the country in which godparents give their godchildren this sweet piece throughout the Easter. “Everything started as a more or less sweet bread that included as many boiled eggs as the boy or girl was old.“, says Balaguer, remembering how, in the school where he was trained, they already talked about the monkey.
Over time those ‘real’ eggs became chocolate… Another fact: the word ‘mona’ comes from the Arabic term ‘munna’ or ‘mouna’, which means “gift”. It has nothing to do with female primates, therefore, although some pastry chefs like Christian Escribà take the opportunity to make monkeys with that shape.
Same name, same tradition: In Murcia there are monkeys at Easter and the one that is eaten in Cartagenafor example, does not cease to be a sweet cake -with certain similarities with the roscón- and that includes the original boiled egg. It is usually eaten on Easter Monday with family or friends, although it is possible to find it in many pastry shops in the region throughout the year.
In the Valencian Community There are also plenty of similarly inspired sweets to that simple monkey. An example is the ‘panquemado’, a sweet bun that can also be found at other times of the year. That yes, if it includes a boiled egg -sometimes, even painted- it is that we are, indeed, in Easter.
Buns, mantecados and ‘pegaratas’
Yes, the strength of the monkey is great throughout the literal Mediterranean, but it is not exclusively there where we come across Easter specific sweets. In AsturiasFor example, there is also a long tradition that godparents give their godson or goddaughter a sweet cake on these dates: the bun or ‘bollu’. “We make chocolate figures of different shapes and sizes and there are those who get the complete ‘pack’: the creation made with cocoa with a base of truffle or yolk cake”explains the pastry chef white july of Pomme Sucre (with two stores, one in Gijón and another in Avilés).
Blanco points out that the shape of the chocolate figure can vary from the classic egg of a lifetime to “anything that becomes fashionable, from the castle from ‘Frozen’ to Wednesday’s house from ‘The Addams Family.'” He also makes hyperlocal variants, such as mantecado de Avilés“a cake that resists very well the weight of the chocolate monkey” and which is shaped like a star, a bit in the vein of the Italian ‘colomba’ (also typical of these dates and which is in turn a premium close to ‘panettone’).
Another option is the ‘pegarata’, a puff pastry bagel that is usually given as a gift in the area of the Asturian mining basin: once again a recipe with obvious links with the monkeys of the Mediterranean arc…
In the north, the connection continues with the Galician Easter bagel, directly a recovery, three months later, of the same mass of the traditional roscón de Reyes. And yes, the eggs boiled in the middle they are once again the most visible difference, substituting the bean and the surprise.
In Andalusia There is also no shortage of sweets made specifically for these dates. Among the most striking, the Arcos de la Frontera buns, one of the so-called white towns of Cádiz. They are characterized by having a low sugar content but are very aromatic thanks to the anise and sesame seeds. They are usually decorated with almonds on top.
Beyond the bun type cakes, fried sweets reign in the southern half of the peninsula. They are very typical pestiños, very characteristic for the honey bath that they carry and for including orange and sesame seeds in their dough, and from which an endless number of variants arise, such as drunkards from Malaga, which can be filled with angel hair. Much more austere are the birds of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), based on fried flour and egg dough, and which only incorporate sugar on its surface through a layer of syrup or light glaze.
After enumerating all this string of easter sweets the doubt remains to ask, And what about the torrija? “Of course, still she is still the queen in Madrid, For example. On the contrary, in Barcelona they are hardly made on these dates: we only do them one day a week”, explains Balaguer.
In restaurants all year
As much as its origin is linked to the Easterits popularity has grown so much that today it is not uncommon to see it on restaurant menus throughout Spain throughout the year. That is to say, it is a sweet ‘semanasantero’ that has transcended its own time.
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Of course, Balaguer does not hesitate to point out that if there is a sweet that, due to its spectacular nature, continues to be the favorite of these dates, that is the monkey. “It is wonderful to see the faces of the children who come to one of my stores and are amazed by the chocolate figures“.
Many of them are the result of a long elaboration and constitute a whim for which, even in Madrid, there are times when “it is not even necessary for the godfather or godmother to intervene: it is the parents or grandparents themselves who buy it from the little ones any of the days of the Easter to enjoy it with the family & rdquor ;. Because who is bitter about a sweet?