Jelly Roll Cake

My last post made me reflect on Puerto Rican desserts. Note that as a kid I hated going to "traditional" restaurants because I wanted "other" food. Sometimes Mami called this American food (ie fast food chains) but it also meant anything ethnic or sugary. Worst at the traditional PR restaurant were the deserts. They were the same at every place no matter if it was The Tropicale in the abandoned Paseos mall or Burbujas or Los Hermanos. You know how you can go to any Chinese restaurant in America and they all seem to have the same menu? Well same happened in PR. The restaurant mob got together and said "Ok, we are all going to have the same deserts. They are going to be brought out on a giant serving tray for everyone to admire albeit they all know what to expect. And, of course, we won't make any of these."

So there was always flan. Which I am not a fan of. No fan flan here. Not a big fan of custards except creme burlee which is only passable because they toast the top and make it less like eating a piece of sugary whale blubber.

Then there was "dulce de lechoza" which means candied papaya except no one calls is lechoza back home. This is candied papaya served with a semihard white cheese I was taught was "Caribbean Cheese" You can find it at CostCo as Queso Caribe made in Wisconsin. Its damn good especially grilled in a pan like halloumi or other grilling cheeses. Here it is still good but the candied papaya is often dry and feels like sucking down the membrane on a long cold hot chocolate. Note this is impossible to find outside PR and now I crave it.

Then was "tres leches" which is three milk cake. Its a sponge cake soaked in three milks. What I was never sure. Regular milk. Condensed milk and err maybe like skim milk. Mami said it was goats milk but doubt it. In any case tres leches is OK except it can ave the mouth fell of soaked toilet paper.

Then the tray dices it up because the try to sneak in some more flan as different deserts. This is a chocolate flan and a pumpkin flan. Bull shit.

But the PR dessert I want to talk about is el brazo gitano (literally gypsy arm but likely means gypsy cake) or Jelly Roll cake as I have dubbed it.

The main player in the jelly roll cake is a company called Brazo Gitano Franco which is based in town I was born in, Mayaguez, PR. Mayaguez is like the Youngstown, OH or Binghamton, NY of Puerto Rico. It used to be a big deal and your family is from there. Famoulsy enough I took my then girlfriend now wife to Mayaguez and based on my description of it she for real thought there would be no power. "I expected a donkey to be tied up to a post next to the church," she said only to realize it is like City of Industry, CA just with no industry. And less Mexicans.

The Franco bakery is right across the River Yaguez from my aunt's house in the neighborhood Mami grew up in. You could swim there if you were so inclied especially since its about 30 feet but the water is about 90% silt. From what I understand you can walk there now what with all the silt build up but when we walked we had to cut through the abandoned concrete house someone left on the riverbank when the finance fell through.

This cake is ubiquitous across PR. It is in white rectangular boxes with a red and yellow trim. They come in dozens of flavors (still indicated by a marker check someone physically puts on there) but the default one is guava.

Now if you run into another Puerto Rican they are going to say that oh yeah they love brazo gitano but they are laying because no one likes these monstrosities. It is the candy corn of Puerto Rico. Or fruit cake. It exists solely to be gifted to people you don't care enough about but still feel obliged to. Or to tourists in the duty free section of SJU airport.

All these bad boys are a  yellow sponge rolled around a gritty guava paste. They are then BLASTED in powdered sugar and sealed in plastic wrap and shucked into the box.



These things are awful. Dry yellow cake with too much powdered sugar and that paste that bites back. It makes you scream for something to drink. 'Its not to bad with a cup of coffee," Mami said last time she ferried some up for me and the family. Well, falling off the roof of my house isn't too bad with a cup of coffee either, Mami!

There are other flavors. The "crema" (cream) flavor was OK as it was filled with a white buttercream frosting that did not taste like the bottom of a grizzled prospector's pan.

Mind you there are competing jelly roll cakes in Mayaguez like Ricomini but I never had there cakes. I would like to both these sites but the Franco one is "under construction" and the Ricomini one is a 404 error  code. "Mayaguez is a sleepy town. We rise and go to bed with the rooster," said a cousin of mine once. "Mayaguez is where we swallow a cable," is what we mother would say meaning its a boring place. And she grew up there! It reminds me of that line in Return of the Jedi where Luke tells Han there is nothing to see on Tatooine.

Oh, one GREAT desert is the Yemita which translates to "little egg cake" and I can't find anywhere on Google. That was a treat for going to Mayaguez. It is was an airy sponge cake covered in a bright yellow glaze and then coated with sprinkles. They then sprinkled some rainbow dot sprinkles on it and sealed this all in with an egg wash. It was golden and bright like a rod of escaped plutonium. The size of a bar of soap it was a meal onto itself.

Now I want one of those but that would mean going to Mayaguez.