Bola de fraile means “friar’s ball” in Spanish — the name references the round shape and connects the pastry to the European monastic baking tradition where fried dough sweets were made in convents and monasteries and sold to fund religious communities. The same tradition produced the Spanish buñuelo, the Polish pączki, and dozens of other […]

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Chajá was created in the 1920s at the Hotel Las Familias in Paysandú, a city in northwestern Uruguay on the Argentine border, by a pastry chef named Orlando Castellano. It is named after the chajá — a large, crested bird native to the wetlands of Uruguay and Argentina, known for its light, buoyant flight. The […]

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