Special Sweet Pastries: From Cinnamon-flavoured Spongy Ones to Carnival Fritters

Pastries come in different sizes, and shapes with extra ingredients beyond the fixed flour, a kind of fat and water. We pick the sweet kind and bring to you some of the world’s sweetest to not-so-overtly-sweet, but definitely not falling under the healthy sweet recipes, pastries. Most of these pastries use a lot of butter or something similar for that impeccably smooth taste, so, watch out if you have high cholesterol and have diet restrictions. Here are some of the world’s warmest and softest pastries.

1. Golfeados

These are nothing but cinnamon rolls that are a spin off of the famous American cinnamon rolls. Golfeados are from Venezuela made with flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, yeast and grated cheese, which is baked; it is glazed with a panela (local unrefined whole cane sugar) syrup. This pastry is quite sticky because of the cheese in it with a robust flavor of vanilla, cinnamon and star anise. The exterior has a crunch to it and becomes a beautiful golden brown with a soft, buttery and cheesy inside that is full with the fragrance of spices.

The Venezuelans like their local doughnuts with a cup of strong coffee.

2. Bomboloni

Deep fried doughnuts from Italy are associated with the carnival season in the country but can be found year round. They originate from the sunny Tuscan shores where they still stick to the simplest version of the Bomboloni with just a covering of sugar dust. Away from the northern part of the country, more flamboyant versions emerge with fillings in the Bomboloni from custard to chocolate cream. But despite the versions Italians will agree that a Bomboloni tastes the best while it still has some remnants of its warmth.

3. Trigona panoramatos

A Greek sweet pastry originating from the edges of Thessaloniki, they are made with phyllo pastry making them crispy and flaky and sweet because the cone shaped pastries are soaked in a cool sugar syrup, which are then filled with a creamy custard. Kind of like a nauseatingly sweet cream roll but better than the commercially manufactured, store bought variety. The phyllo pastry is, of course, baked till they are golden in cone shapes and like with Turkish and Greek desserts, sprinkled with chopped nuts.

4. Pastel de Belém

You've heard of pastel de nata, a kind of the Portuguese egg custard tart, for Pastel de Belém is its ancestor. The tart shell is made with what goes into the typical sweet pastry with the custard flavored with lemon and cinnamon powder. Like many desserts, this one too is linked to a monastery, this time the men, the monks, took the reins, and made the first Pastel de Belém in the Jerónimos monastery in 1837. It's called such because it comes from Belém and it's basically the same as the pastel de nata, outside the region, the rest of the egg custard tarts are called pastel de nata. Eat it hot or cold, both ways it’s delicious.

5. Zeeuwse bolus

From the South-west Dutch province of Zeeland comes a version of cinnamon rolls called Zeeuwse bolus. They look quite rustic and are best eaten warm, with butter, to bring out the best of the cinnamon flavour and the flaky pastry. The glaze is made with brown sugar and ground cinnamon that gives the bolussen a dark appearance. It is said a bunch of Jewish baker, who were shepherds, made them in the first half of the 1600s.

6. Pineapple bun

These are small, muffin-lookalike sweet pastries that are named because of how their tops take on a chequered appearance resembling the skin of a pineapple. It originated in Hong Kong made with flour, lard, eggs and sugar only. Like most pastries it has a sweet and crunchy crust with a soft and spongy inside. It's extremely popular in Hong Kong and inexpensive to buy and like other pastries, these too taste amazing with tea or coffee and are also eaten for breakfast.

7. Chiacchiere

This sweet pastry from Italy is a carnival snack, also made for other local festivals, that is usually covered with powdered sugar, and carnivals happen all over the country the origin isn't clear. Different regions have different names for the same thing made in the exact same way with the exact ingredients and similar shapes. They are called angel wings and are kind of like fritters where the dough is cut into rectangular sheets twisted into ribbons or cut into rectangular pieces with a wavy cutter for wavy borders. Most Chiacchiere call for the use of some kind of wine, usually the choice with desserts is the Marsala wine and Chiacchiere uses the same mostly in Sicily, while other regions might use Grappa, a local grape liqueur.