Gordas de Harina — Mascota, Jalisco

A traditional wheat flour cookie from the mountain town of Mascota in Jalisco, Mexico. Unlike the corn-based gorditas found elsewhere in the country, these are thin, griddle-cooked rounds made rich by a triple-fat combination — vegetable shortening, pork lard, and natas (the thick cream skimmed from heated whole milk, similar in character to clotted cream) or unsalted butter. Pressed flat on a tortilla press and cooked low and slow, they finish crisp as they cool on the rack, landing somewhere between a shortbread and a flour tortilla in character. Diana Kennedy documented them from the Jalisco highlands, where home bakers have long kept this style of sweet griddle cookie alive.

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Serves40 cookies

Within reach0of 2 in Osoyoos

Two not yet within reach.

How the 2 are reached

Not yet within reach: 2 · vegetable shortening, pork lard

Cook

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The Market List

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2½ oz (75 g)

vegetable shortening

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2½ oz (75 g)

pork lard

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2½ oz (75 g)

natas or unsalted butter

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½ cup (125 ml)

sugar

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4 teaspoons

salt

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2 large

eggs

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1 lb (450 g)

all-purpose flour

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The Method

Cream the three fats together until smooth and uniform.

Beat in the sugar, salt, and eggs along with a small handful of flour until the mixture is cohesive.

Work in the remaining flour gradually until a soft, pliable dough forms. Do not overwork.

Divide into 40 equal balls (approximately 1 oz / 28 g each).

Press each ball between plastic-lined tortilla press plates to a 5-inch round.

From the canon — The corn tortilla is the foundational food of Mexican cuisine — a thin, round disc of nixtamalized masa cooked on an ungreased comal (flat griddle) until it … Tortilla — hand press, comal, and the puff →

Cook on a griddle held at very low heat — approximately 150–160°C / 300–320°F — until lightly golden on the underside, about 5 minutes. Flip and repeat.

Transfer to a wire rack in a single layer and cool completely. The cookies crisp as they cool.

III

Sensory Tests

◇Hold a cooled gorda between thumb and forefinger and apply gentle lateral pressure: a correctly made one snaps cleanly with an audible crack and the cross-section reveals a uniform, slightly layered pale-golden interior — not a doughy bend or a floury white centre.

◇Press the surface of a warm gorda immediately after it comes off the comal: it should feel soft and yielding, then firm noticeably within two minutes of rack resting — if it stays soft and floppy after five minutes of cooling, the fat ratio or the cooking temperature was wrong.

◇Smell the gorda at room temperature: the dominant note should be toasted wheat with a secondary milky-fat warmth. Any rancid note indicates old lard; any absence of fat fragrance entirely suggests the fat proportion is too low or the natas were omitted in favour of a lean substitute.

◇Where it lives or dies. The gorda lives or dies in the first thirty seconds on the comal: the heat must be low enough that the fat in the dough melts and migrates slowly to the surface, basting the round from within as it sets — too high and the exterior seizes before the interior cooks through, producing a raw-centred round that will never crisp properly on the rack regardless of how long it cools.

IV · Cross-Cuisine Parallels

scottish-shortbread — Scottish — Both rely on a high ratio of rendered or clarified animal fat to soft flour to achieve a sandy, crumbling snap on cooling; both are cooked at low heat to prevent browning before the interior sets; and both are deceptively plain in ingredient list yet punishingly precise in fat quality and temperature management. clotted-cream-scone — Cornish / English West Country — The use of natas — thick cream skimmed from scalded whole milk — mirrors the role of clotted cream in enriching baked doughs; in both preparations this particular fat contributes a faintly caramelised, dense dairy note that fluid cream or butter cannot replicate. tlayuda — Oaxacan — Both are griddle-cooked wheat or corn rounds where the comal temperature and the slow cook are the central technical variables, and both finish their texture transformation off the heat — the tlayuda crisping as it dries, the gorda de harina crisping as its fats solidify on the cooling rack.

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