Carnival Fried Flowers

Carnival is coming soon and, in addition to the parties and costumes, we have a lot of great recipes to make at home and enjoy. Like these Carnival fried flowers. I don’t know how many years I’ve been wanting to buy a fried flower mold (florón) and, what’s even worse, to try these wonderful homemade flowers. I was very curious to cook them, I know they have no great mystery, but it is one of those recipes that I wanted to live in first person following the whole process.

And, finally, I got that little thorn out of my side. In case any of you are in a similar situation to mine, I hope this publication will give you the final push to encourage you with them.

Carnival fried flowers are one of the recipes that can be classified as “pan fruits”.

I already told you about them, and about how much I like this denomination, in the post of Les Casadielles. It is difficult to know for sure when these sweets originated and thanks to whom we can still enjoy them today; Andalusian, Sephardic and Christian religious orders, even chivalrous military orders such as the Calatravos or Templars. We cannot affirm that none of them were the inventors, although we do know that they were assiduous consumers of wonderful pastries.

This type of fried dessert can be sweet or salty, like the almojábanas. These are a kind of fritters of Muslim origin that are filled with cheese. They appear in two books: The anonymous Almohad manuscript of the XIIII century, translated by Ambrosio Huici and La Fudalaof the Murcian Ibn Razin -S.XIII-).

Within this type of elaborations, the best known in Spain and Latin America are churros and porras. It seems that, according to Egyptian engravings and frescoes such as those in the tomb of Ramses III, they have a Pharaonic origin. Very possibly it was the slaves of Judea (Jews freed by Moses) who brought the recipe to the Iberian Peninsula in one of their diasporas. It is also possible that it was the Greeks who created this preparation and the Romans who plagiarized it and later brought it as part of the diet of the conquerors of Hispania. Both cultures had large olive oil farms.

Fried flowers.

Fried flowers is a preparation made with a batter of runny consistency that is fried and then sweetened with either honey or sugar. To give it its characteristic shape, molds are used (the oldest ones forged in iron, the modern ones in stainless steel) which are immersed in very hot olive oil for a long time. This step favors the cooking of the batter so that it is suitable and favors that the flower comes off easily. After frying them and letting them cool, they are coated with sugar and cinnamon or honey.

This preparation is known as fried flowers, flowers of La Mancha, flor de Lis, floretas, florines, flowers of Carnival, flowers of Calatrava, nardos (in Jaén) or flowers of Entroido (Galicia and Portugal).

There is even a variant of flowers from La Mancha also known as hojuelasand orejetes, but unlike the flowers, these are not made with an iron mold, but with a cane.

In Indonesia and Malaysia you can also find a variety of fried flowers, these are called Kue Jembang Goyang, a specialty of the Betawi cuisine. Unlike the recipe we are going to prepare, these are made with rice flour, coconut milk and fried in palm oil. The mold used to make them is a 7-shaft wheel, very similar to the one we use.

What is the significance of the flower mold?

The most widespread belief is that the wrought iron molds represent insignia of religious and military orders, but after analyzing some of them, it is not so clear. It is possible that these forms served to distinguish the product, the sweet elaboration, in the street markets or were a way to represent a family lineage. As it happens, for example, with the irons-marks of the cattle currencies with which the cattle are marked.

These molds used to be inherited from generation to generation, they were part of the family legacy and memory.

There is a great diversity of forms that have evolved over the centuries, but the common denominator of all of them is that they are forged in iron and hammered on an anvil, tempered in forges. It is possible that each village, each family, ordered their own iron to make flowers according to some symbolism that was close to them, possibly religious, since these flowers were made and consumed during Lent, Easter and Carnival.

In the case of the Jews, this type of fried sweets were typical of the festival of Chanukah (festival of the lamps) and Purim (festival of Queen Esther).

In my case, I do not have such a precious or striking history with the mold…. It is a pity that this kind of utensils and customs are being lost. The good thing is that we do have many facilities to be able to acquire them and enjoy these recipes, with so much history, in our homes.