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The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami

Matahambre

Jiguaní, Granma

Matahambre: golden squares of a baked bar, the cut sides showing a dark red layer of guava paste between two layers of pale cake.

Illustration

Matahambre, kill-hunger, is a sweet. The one given here is a batter of flour, sugar, eggs and melted butter baked in two layers with pieces of guava paste between them, then cut in squares, "el corte típico de este rico dulce", the typical cut. Cubahora lists matahambre among the dishes of Jiguaní, in Granma, with roast pork, casabe with longaniza and corn bollo, "todos con un sello distintivo Jiguanicero", all with a Jiguaní stamp.

The name covers two sweets. CiberCuba, from exile, gives the flour and guava bar under its other name, masarreal, and calls it matahambre too. The Santiago chef Jorge Méndez Rodríguez-Arencibia gives a matahambre oriental of grated yuca with honey, brown sugar and cinnamon, wrapped in banana leaf and baked, sold by Santiago's street criers. Which one Jiguaní's cooks make, the sources do not settle. The recipe below, the bar, is Cubahora's, written by the Havana physician Alberto Quirantes, and it reads like a Cuban American one: Fahrenheit first, a nine by twelve inch tin. It is given on the island clock in metric.

As tradition built it

Makes one 23 by 30cm tin.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 225g butter, melted, and a little for the tin
  • 3 tsp water
  • 680g guava paste, in 6mm pieces

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 175°C.
  2. Mix the plain flour, the sugar, the baking powder and the salt in a bowl.
  3. Add the eggs, the egg yolk, the melted butter and the water, and mix with a wooden spoon until it is all well combined.
  4. Spread half the batter in a greased 23 by 30cm tin and level it.
  5. Lay the pieces of guava paste over it, and spread the rest of the batter on top.
  6. Bake until just golden, about 40 minutes. Let it cool and cut it in squares.

Notes

Cubahora gives the butter as half a pound and the guava as a pound and a half, converted here; CiberCuba's masarreal uses 225g of butter and 14 ounces of guava paste and bakes 45 to 50 minutes at 180°C.

Revista Más Cuba gives a third meaning: a matahambre made from the scraps of every other sweet, pressed into a brick.

What a modern chef changes

The guava softened into a layer, and the bar left to set

Method

  1. Warm the guava paste with a spoonful of water and spread it as one layer, edge to edge. Pieces leave holes; a layer gives every square the same.
  2. Weigh the flour. Two cups is anywhere from 240g to 280g depending on how it is spooned, and the bar's texture lives in that difference.
  3. Brown the butter before it goes in, cooled to warm, for a nutty note against the sharp guava.
  4. Let it set overnight before you cut it. The guava firms as it cools and the squares come out clean.
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