You Deserve Dessert : 4 Delicious Mexican Desserts for After a Spicy Meal

If you’re new to the world of Mexican desserts, then you are in for a treat. There are so many classic Mexican desserts that can make the ultimate ending to any meal, and we’d be here for days if we tried to explore them all. But we can highlight some of our favorite Mexican sweets that have as much use for those delicious organic spices tucked away in your cabinet as delicious Mexican meals do!

Pastel de elote, or Mexican sweet corn cake, is a very popular and delicious way to end your meal. This classic Mexican dessert is easy to bake and not super sweet, so you can dress the sweetness up or down depending on your preferences and the toppings you pick. You can top it with powdered sugar, caramel, fruit, or vanilla ice cream (or any combination of these) for a sweeter take.

To make this delicious Mexican treat, you’ll need:

• Brown and white sugar
• Butter, room temperature
• Eggs
• Vanilla extract
• Corn oil
• All-purpose flour (or gluten-free flour if you are making it gluten-free)
• Baking powder
• Salt
• Half and half
• Corn kernels (either thawed from frozen or from a can)

Start by preheating the oven to 375°F and preparing a bundt pan or cast iron skillet by buttering and flouring it. To make the batter, cream your butter and sugars and add the eggs one at a time until the mixture is fully incorporated. Next, add your vanilla and oil and beat before adding in your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt).

Once all of those are incorporated, add in the half and half and mix until the batter is smooth. Finally, fold in the corn and pour your mixture into your prepared bundt or cast iron pan. Bake for 25-35 minutes and let cool for a few minutes before slicing.

If you’re looking for a way to spice up this cake, you can add some cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, or allspice to the mix as well.

While flan is not originally from Mexico, it has become so popular in Latin America over the years that most people associate it with Latin American cuisine more than any other. This is for a good reason. When flan was introduced to Mexico and the rest of Latin America by the Spaniards who ran with it when the Roman Empire fell, it was quickly adopted, adapted, and, dare we say, improved. Now there are coffee, chocolate, and coconut flavored flans that have become increasingly popular across the country and worldwide.

And luckily for all of us, flan is incredibly easy to make and requires minimal preparation! There are endless recipes for flan, and you can find recipes for flavored flans as well, but let’s start with a basic caramel flan first.

So, what do you need to make a delicious, creamy flan?

• White sugar
• Lemon juice
• Water
• Eggs, room temperature
• Sweetened condensed milk
• Evaporated milk
• Vanilla extract

The sugar, water, and lemon juice are all for the trickiest part (the caramel), and everything below that is for the custard part of the flan. There are three main steps to making a caramel flan: the caramel, the egg mixture, and baking. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and water to a pan to start your caramel, and occasionally stir while it browns over medium heat. Remove it from the heat as soon as it becomes golden, and carefully pour it into the bottom of the cake pan or baking dish you use for your flan.

To make the egg mixture, you simply mix all the remaining ingredients until the mixture is smooth and free of lumps. You can pass it through a sieve to get it super smooth.

Once your egg mixture is done, carefully pour it on top of the caramel and set your flan in a deep rectangular pan to create the water bath. Pour water into the rectangle pan (careful not to get any into your flan dish) and fill until you’re about halfway up your flan pan. Bake at 350°F for 60-65 minutes and let it cool before serving. You can also refrigerate it, but we do not recommend freezing it as it will compromise the smooth texture of the flan.

No post about Mexican desserts would be complete without including tres leches cake. If you’ve never had one, we hope you’re ready to find your new favorite indulgence!

To make tres leches cake, you need:

Cake

• Cake flour
• Banking powder
• Salt
• Unsalted butter, room temperature
• Sugar
• Eggs, room temperature
• Vanilla
• Milk

Milk Mixture

• Heavy whipping cream
• Sweetened condensed milk
• Evaporated milk

Topping

• Heavy whipping cream, cold
• Cream cheese, room temperature
• Sugar
• Vanilla
• Cinnamon 

The process for this dessert is very straightforward. First, bake your cake. If you do not want to make a cake from scratch, you can also use a boxed mix. After you’ve made your cake, take a fork and poke holes all over the cake. This will help the milk mixture to soak into every part of the cake. Pour your milk mixture on top of the cake and let it soak for at least 3 hours. Top your cake with the stabilized whipped cream topping and sprinkle the cinnamon on top, and you are done! You can also add some fruit to the top for more flavor (our favorites are fresh strawberries or canned peaches).

If you’re in the mood for something sweet but don’t feel like baking anything or having leftover sweets, a delicious and creamy cup of Mexican hot chocolate may be just what you are looking for. All you need to make this effortless treat is:

• Milk (whatever milk you typically use can be dairy-free as well)
• Cocoa powder
• Sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Ground cinnamon
• Chili powder
• Ground cayenne (leave out if you don’t want your hot chocolate to be spicy)
• Bittersweet chocolate

Simply mix all of the ingredients in a pan, adding the bittersweet chocolate last after everything else is mixed and beginning to heat up. Whisk everything together and keep heating until the mixture is smooth, creamy, and hot. Serve in your favorite mug with your favorite toppings (we like marshmallows, chocolate shavings, and a sprinkle of cinnamon or cardamom)!

We hope these four incredibly easy and mouthwatering Mexican desserts inspire you the next time you’re looking for a sweet treat after a meal. One of our favorite things about Mexican desserts, besides their taste, is that they do not shy away from using delicious seasonings and spices in them.

This, in our opinion, makes them stand out from other desserts, and it makes us excited to make some sweet treats for ourselves just thinking about it! So, if you are looking for ways to incorporate spices into your desserts, we hope you try out one of these treats or make your own using some of our organic seasonings, like Maple Cinnamon!