Amarante Papos de Anjo

Also known as: Amarante angel’s throats

A host-wafer crescent filled with soft yolk and almond, finished in syrup and sugar.

Origin: Amarante · Tâmega e Sousa
Region: Amarante
Season: Year-round; especially at Amarante’s Convent Sweets Fair

Sweetness

Richness

Difficulty

Amarante’s Papos de Anjo are not the small syrup-soaked yolk cakes known elsewhere in Portugal. Here the sweet is crescent-shaped: two paper-thin host-wafer faces enclose a cooked paste of egg yolks, grated almonds and sugar syrup.

The wafer is moistened at the edges, folded over the warm filling and trimmed with scissors. Each crescent is then dipped in syrup and coated in a mixture of granulated and icing sugar, producing a white, dry, lightly granular surface around a moist almond-and-yolk interior.

Ingredients

egg yolks
blanched almonds
sugar
water
host wafer
icing sugar

Taste & texture

Dense moist yolk-and-almond filling between delicate wafer and a softly crackling sugar coat.

Variations

Some makers reduce or omit the almond, but the crescent shape, host wafer and two-stage syrup-and-sugar finish define the Amarante version.

Where to try it

At Amarante’s traditional confectioneries and the local convent-sweets fair.

Pairs well with

Coffee, green tea or white Port.

History

They belong to Amarante’s historic confectionery associated with the Poor Clares of Santa Clara Convent. The French invasions and the nuns’ withdrawal are traditionally identified as the moment the knowledge passed into local families; advertisements and testimony document these sweets in Amarante confectioneries from at least the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sources: douroetamega.pt · amarantetourism.com · docesconventuaisdeamarante.pt · cm-terrasdebouro.pt

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