Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
I love sweets! After good dinners, Argentina offers many sweet treats for dessert.
Two things should appear on every Postre Menu that you receive in a restaurant: Ice Cream and Dulce de Leche. Italian immigration to Argentina brought another flavor to the desserts. From Italy, we get the “creative” types of pizza, many variations of pasta and accompying delicious marinades. Best of all, from Italy we get gelato. If there is a café on every corner, there is a Confiteria or a Heladeria on every block. The Confectionaries display many different kinds of cookies, filled with chocolate mousse or vanilla cream, almond paste, or walnut cream with different kinds of tortes to pair them. Apple Crumb cake, fruit cake, apple pie, Torta de Membrillo—which is delectably sweet, and at the end of it all, Dulce de Leche.
Dulce de Leche is a creamy caramel put into cookies and baked into cakes and pancakes. I have even seen it spread onto wafers and eaten like peanut butter. Most famously, Dulce de Leche is put in the center of two cookies, and covered on the outside with soft chocolate, called an alfajor. Argentines claim that alfajores were created in Argentina but I am skeptical. No one else in Latin America realized the deliciousness of dulce de leche on cookies? Unlikely in my opinion.
What about the gelato you ask? That might have to be another story since you can find over 50 different flavors of gelato in one store! The best ice cream can come from a variety of different companies. Sorrento, a chain based in Buenos Aires, offers a variety of flavors, but there are Mom and Pop ice cream stores on every corner. While you cannot find ice cream in many grocery stores, these shops do home deliveries. On Avenida Córdoba, at the intersection of Armenia and Córdoba, there is an ice cream shop known as “Your Neighborhood Ice Cream Shop” (that’s an approximate translation). This place has ten different kinds of chocolate ice cream—from nutty chocolate, whether that be peanuts, almonds, walnuts, or pistachios—and eight different kinds of dulce de leche, some mixed with other caramels, some mixed with brownies, others mixed with vanilla beans, etc. And a double scoop is only $7 pesos!
Let’s just say, after my dessert trip in Argentina, I might come back a little fatter, and happier all the same!
