What Are Alfajores? Argentina's Favourite Cookie
Two soft cookies, a layer of dulce de leche, and a whole continent that loves them. A short guide to alfajores.
By Daniel MellicovskyBaker and owner, Melly's Cookiebar
An alfajor is two soft cookies joined with dulce de leche, sometimes dipped in chocolate or rolled in coconut. It is the most loved sweet across Argentina and much of Latin America, and we make ours by hand at Melly's Cookiebar in Amsterdam.
Chocolate or maicena?
Our chocolate alfajores are dipped in chocolate around a dulce de leche centre, rich and indulgent. The maicena alfajores are softer and lighter: tender cornstarch cookies filled with dulce de leche and rolled in coconut, the kind that melt in your mouth.
Where alfajores come from
The alfajor travelled from the Middle East to Spain and on to South America, where every country made it their own. In Argentina it became a national obsession, sold on every corner. Ours follow the family recipe we have baked in Amsterdam since 2003.
You can buy them fresh, packed in a collector tin, at the Cookiebar or shipped across the Netherlands. See both kinds on our alfajores page.
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.
