There's a bakery in El Paso, Texas that we just LOVE. Anytime we visit the city, we make sure to stop at Bowie Bakery first. We constantly have huge cravings for their yummy sweets but it's hard to find anything similar where we live now. Recently, it was brought to our attention that we are in fact Pastry Chefs and that we could just make the stuff ourselves. Our minds were blown!

Over the next few months, we plan to try and recreate our favorite Mexican sweets breads and cookies. First off, my personal favorite: Marranitos!!!



Marranitos are yummy pig-shaped cookies. For some reason they are also called gingerbread pigs despite not having an ounce of ginger in them. In fact, the flavor that you taste is the molasses and cinnamon.

One of the problems we came across was the fact we did not have a pig cut out. We did the one in the picture above by hand. Since it's Easter here, we decided to user our bunny and duck cutout for the rest of the batch. Needless to say, they came out really cute.



For those wanting to try it out, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

* 1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
* 1/4 cup shortening
* 1 egg
* 1/4 cup milk
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 cup unsulfured molasses
* 6 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 egg, beaten


Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, cream together brown sugar and shortening until smooth. Mix in 1 egg, milk, and vanilla until smooth. Stir in the baking soda, cinnamon, and molasses. Mix in flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.
3. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into cookies using a pig shaped cookie cutter. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Brush the remaining beaten egg over the tops of the cookies.
4. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the centers of the cookies appear dry and edges are lightly browned.

~allrecipes.com

This recipe was amazing! The cookies are delicious and pretty much how we remembered them.

Now please excuse us while we devour the adorable little cookies!

Toodles!