It was a last-minute ask.
My friend needed a few extra hands to finish her holiday confection preparation as Christmas Eve descended. “Your place or mine … I will come to you.”
I couldn’t say no.
She arrived with all the supplies from her kitchen: a dozen eggs, a carton of milk, a quart of neutral oil, a sack of flour, a bag of sugar, and all the spices. She even brought measuring utensils and other dishware we would need for an assembly line of tinkering and finishing touches.
“These are called ‘Buneulos’,” she said slowly and clearly, nodding patiently as I repeated the word several times, emphasizing different syllables with a question-mark lilt in my voice. She gently repeated the word until my brain could settle the sounds into their proper order.
“That’s it! You’ve got it!”
She pulled out a snowflake-shaped mold that had been welded to a long, metal rod tipped by a short, wooden dowel. It gave cookie-cutter quaintness with a cattle brand vibe.
She worked quickly as she described what would happen next: when dipped in the thin batter and immersed in the oil bubbling in the Dutch oven, a delicate fritter would crisp up and release from the ornate family heirloom with just a few well-placed nudges with a butter knife.
Despite the steps that had to follow one another in precise order, the process was straightforward: measure, mix, dip, fry, dry, and finally, dust with the crystalline magic that is cinnamon sugar.
For now, she explained, it would be my job to blot the oil and ensure each exquisite snowflake glistened.
All went as planned until the first fritter stuck to the mold like glue. Then another. And another. Between each interval, we scraped and scrubbed the washed and dried the snowflake before trying again.
Three more times, the ancestors, it seemed, refused to give up the ghost.
It was a mystery.
We wondered aloud whether it was a Goldilocks problem; maybe the oil was too hot? Or maybe it was too cold? I wondered in silence whether it was the curse of my kitchen, a place where, under my watch, water burns to a crisp.
“Should we just let it go?” my friend asked. “It’s late, and I don’t want to tie up your night. This might just be a sign that my bunuelos are just not meant to be this year.”
I did not want to admit defeat.
And although I yet to experience what making 100 snowflake fritters would entail once we were finally “cooking with grease,” as our mothers used to say, I wanted to keep trying.
I also remembered a long-forgotten deep fryer that still lived somewhere in these cabinets.
“Maybe,” I ventured, “the fryer would keep a more consistent temperature, and that would be the solution.
A few minutes of futzing … and sending the returning college freshman to the grocery for a top-off of oil … was all it took to get the assembly line up and running.
The boy even rolled up his sleeves and offered to help after he handed over the Wesson.
One batch and then another … my friend marveled as my boy, with just a twist of the wrist, made the snowflake bloom in the oil like a miracle. No prying needed.
He fried, I dried, and she packed towering stacks into boxes for distribution.
We talked, and laughed, and I loved each sweet moment.
“I’m so glad we persevered.”
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