The ensaïmada is a pastry product from Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain. It is a common cuisine eaten in Southwestern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The first written references to the Mallorcan ensaïmada date back to the 17th century. At that time, although wheat flour was mainly used for making bread, there is evidence that this typical pastry product was made for festivals and celebrations. The ensaïmada de Mallorca is made with strong flour, water, sugar, eggs, mother dough and a kind of reduced porklard named saïm. The handmade character of the product makes it difficult to give an exact formula, so scales have been established defining the proportion of each ingredient, giving rise to an excellent quality traditional product. The name comes from the Catalan word saïm, which means 'pork lard'. In Mallorca and Ibiza there is a sweet called greixonera made with ensaïmada pieces left over from the day before.
Among the variants of ensaimada the most common are:
Llisa with no extra ingredient.
Cabell d'àngel, the stringy orange strands found inside pumpkins are cooked with sugar to make a sweet filling that is rolled inside the dough.
Tallades covered with sobrassada and pumpkin, obtaining a bittersweet taste. It is typical of Carnival days, just before Lent, when meat are not supposed to be eaten.
The Philippines also adopted the Mallorcan ensaïmada. As a Spanish colony for over 300 years, the Philippine variant has evolved over the centuries and is perhaps one of the most common delicacies in the country. The localized pastry is a brioche baked with butter instead of lard and topped with grated cheese and sugar and can be found in almost all neighborhood bakeshops. Other versions are topped with buttercream, salted egg slices, and a specially aged type of Edam cheese called queso de bola. The ensaymada of Pampanga features a very rich dough with layers of butter and cheese.
It is customary to eat ensaymada with hot chocolate made with native tablea during the Philippine Christmas season. Due to its extreme popularity as a snack across the islands, popular bakeshop chains such as Goldilocks, Red Ribbon, Julie's and Kamuning Bakery also offer ensaymada with their own recipe.
