Alfajores Recipe: How to Make Argentine Alfajores
Argentina's favourite cookie: two soft rounds and a heart of dulce de leche. The styles, a classic recipe, and where to find ours.
By Daniel MellicovskyBaker and owner, Melly's Cookiebar
Ask anyone from Argentina about their favourite sweet and the answer is almost always the same: the alfajor. It is a sandwich cookie built around a thick heart of dulce de leche, and Argentines eat more of them per person than anywhere on earth. Here is how to make them at home, the styles worth knowing, and where to buy ours if you would rather skip the baking.
The styles of alfajor
There is no single alfajor. The ones you meet most often are:
- Alfajor de maicena, pale cornstarch cookies rolled in coconut, soft enough to melt in the mouth.
- Chocolate alfajor, a cocoa dough coated in dark or milk chocolate.
- Alfajor de nieve, finished with a thin white sugar glaze.
- Regional ones, like the meringue-topped santafesino or the fruit-filled cordobés.
What they all share is the filling. A proper alfajor lives or dies on its dulce de leche.
A classic recipe to start with
The maicena alfajor is the one most people make first. In short: cream 100g of butter with 80g of sugar, beat in 2 egg yolks, then fold in 200g of cornstarch, 150g of flour and a teaspoon of baking powder to a soft dough. Rest it, roll it gently, and bake small rounds at 170C for about ten minutes, until set but never browned. Sandwich the cooled pairs with a generous spoon of dulce de leche and roll the edges in coconut.
For the full method, exact weights and the little tricks that keep them tender, follow our alfajores de maicena recipe.
The filling makes the alfajor
Use a thick, spreadable dulce de leche, the repostero kind, so it holds between the cookies instead of running out. We use Havanna dulce de leche in ours, the same brand many Argentines grew up with. If it is new to you, here is what alfajores are and where they come from.
Baking a batch is a lovely afternoon, but the cookies need a day to soften properly. If you want them now, we make our alfajores by hand in Amsterdam and ship them across the Netherlands, Europe, the UK and the US. Order a box from our shop and skip straight to the good part.
Taste it warm in Amsterdam
Order fresh stroopwafels to your door, or learn to make your own at a Melly's workshop in the heart of the city.
