Chile to Mexico

A two year overland journey across South and Central America

Chile to Mexico
Food and Drink Mexico 

Food in Mexico – Snacks

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As you would expect there were plenty of snacks consumed in Mexico, and so let’s get straight in with the very important ‘crisp’ or ‘chip’ category – we were expecting some good levels of spice in this category and we weren’t disappointed! 🙂 So here are some examples…

Jalapeño chips…MMMM.
Charritos – includes a packet of actual jalapeños – yes you get ACTUAL chillis with these – how good is that? 🙂
These are the charritos and jalapeños ready for consumption. The charritos are ‘corn puffs’.
Churritos de nopal with chilli – yes ‘cactus puffs’ covered in chilli – YES it’s very good!

Next up we have some sweet biscuit-type snacks…

Lemon biscuits – excellent flavour.
Triki-trakes – chocolate chip cookies.
Marianitas – coconut flavoured biscuits.
Peanut marzipan covered in chocolate and peanut marzipan ‘original’ (not covered in chocolate…). These are very famous snacks that have been around in Mexico since the 1950s. AWESOME – peanut and marzipan – what’s not to like!?
Obleas with ‘cajeta de leche de cabra’. That means wafers with dulce de leche made from goat’s milk – a speciality from Celaya (a place that we didn’t visit – we just bought these from a shop).

While we are talking about sweet things, I will mention the Calle de los Dulces in Puebla – which is a famous street where they sell famous sweets. Obviously we had to go and take a look and buy some sweet things…

Camotes de Santa Clara. These are made in the Santa Clara convent in Puebla, and are famous throughout Mexico. They are made from sweet potato and a load of sugary stuff. These are from the ‘Street of sweets’ in Puebla, and were pretty tasty I have to say…
We also bought some candy skulls from the ‘Street of sweets’ in Puebla.

And finally we will mention a chocolate bar named after a king! Yes, is this the only chocolate bar in the world named after a king? Maybe it is, and it’s named after Carlos V – who was a Holy Roman Emperor. It has been on sale in Mexico since 1919, and gets its name because Carlos V was also King of Spain as Carlos I of Spain, and was supposedly responsible for bringing chocolate to European royalty. Anyway, it was bought by Nestle in the 1990s and apparently has ‘NEVER BEEN THE SAME AGAIN’….

Mysteriously, the chocolate has ‘Do you forgive me?’ written on it. A search of the internet reveals nothing…. so it’s either a) a marketing gimmick to encourage people to give out chocolate when they apologise, or b) a message from Nestle because they changed the chocolate recipe…

Carlos V chocolate bar – check out the picture of the king – do you reckon that’s what he really looked like?!
Inside of Carlos V bar – ‘Do you forgive me?’

OK, enough about kings and chocolate, we now have some hot snacks – yeah!

So let’s start with marquesitas, which are a speciality of the Yucatan peninsula. Marquesitas are large rolled crepes filled with a variety of fillings – eg. jam, chocolate, and the main speciality which is ‘queso de bola’ – edam cheese. These are available for sale on the streets of the cities of the Yucatan – so we thought we had better try one. It was quite nice, but not as delicious as we had hoped – probably they were a bit stingy with the cheese…. 🙂

Cheese Marquesita – Valladolid.

Moving on, a good old fashioned empanada – pretty tasty! 🙂

A giant empanada in Campeche.

Next up, our favourite hot snack in Mexico – a cheese and nopales (cactus) quesadilla cooked fresh on a griddle at the front of an old lady’s living room.. it was delicious!

Check out this griddle in Oaxaca – it was in the corner of an old lady’s living room.
Here is the cheese and nopales (cactus) quesadilla cooking on the griddle – so delicious! 🙂

That’s it for hot snacks… what?! yeah in reality many of the things we ate at lunchtime could be classed as ‘hot snacks’ and so probably this section could have been part of the normal food section… in Mexico it seemed like we were constantly eating –  and the line between meals and snacks was as blurred as it has ever been! 🙂

And so before we get to the many, many cakes that we had, I will mention a snack/drink that was unbelievably AWESOME. Yes, I’m talking about chocolate atole (also known as champurrado), served with pan de yema (sweet bread) and butter. OH YES! Champurrado is made from atole (a hot corn drink with sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla (plus other things)) and chocolate. It was served with a large roll for dipping.. how can you go wrong with that!

Chocolate atole with pan de yema and butter. (In Oaxaca).

Baked goods
There was no shortage of delicious items available from bakeries in Mexico, and we endeavoured to make the most of this fact! 🙂 So here we go with a lovely gallery of cake pics 🙂

‘Ojo Vainilla’ (Vanilla Eye) (from Tulum).
Camote (sweet potato) filled pastry slice (from Valladolid).
Tres leches rolls (in Campeche). These were fairly average tasting
Gelatina mosaica (Mosaic Jelly) (in Campeche). Despite the luridness of the colours it was pretty nice! 🙂
Mini empanadas with nice little stickers showing what’s inside them. (from Palenque).
Muffins (in San Cristobal).
Empanadita de leche – an Oaxaca speciality. This was SO delicious… a milky custard filling.
Two more empanaditas from Oaxaca – one was chocolate filled – this turned out to be not as good as the milky custard one.
Ladrillos (literally ‘little bricks’) (in Mexico City).
Dessert in Cafe La Pagoda. (In Mexico City).

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