El Salvador29

Salpores, or salpores de arroz, are traditional Salvadoran rice flour cookies with a dry, crumbly shortbread texture, flavored with cinnamon and anise. Made from rice flour, butter, sugar, and egg, they are a classic Salvadoran pan dulce eaten with coffee or atol, a staple of home bakeries and holiday tables across El Salvador. Why salpores are El Salvador's coffee-table cookie The first time I ate a salpor, I was standing in a kitchen in San Salvador, watching someone's grandmother open a tin from the top shelf. She didn't offer it…

Salvadoran cassava fritters fried golden and soaked in warm panela syrup scented with ginger and cloves. Market-and-fair sweets, made to be eaten with a cup of chilate.

Slices of dense egg-yolk bread fried and steeped in cinnamon-clove panela syrup. Not an everyday sweet: the one Salvadoran families make for Christmas and Semana Santa.

Ripe plantain dough wrapped around a creamy milk custard, fried golden and rolled in sugar. Salvadorans eat these empanadas de leche for breakfast and again in the afternoon.