Pampilho

Description: It has a rectangular shape, measuring about 19 cm long by 4,5 cm wide and 2 cm thick. The color is yellow-glazed and toasted on top. Sometimes its length reaches 20 cm. The dough is prepared with flour, powdered sugar, eggs and butter. The egg jam filling is prepared with egg yolks, sugar syrup and almonds, until a creamy consistency is obtained. Each cake weighs about 120 g.

Region: Lisbon and Tagus Valley.

Particularity: Cake in rectangular shape, toasted yellow, intended to appear as a stick of meadow.

History: The Pampilhos do not have a long tradition in their own right, but they do have it in that they were «imagined» in honor of the man from Ribatejo, more specifically the campino who guards the bulls in the marshland. The pampilho is the long stick with which the campino directs the animals, and hence the shape of the cake. The cake is a creation, about 30 years ago, of Mr. Diamantino Veloso, then pastry chef at Pastelaria Acides (a place where the students of the Agrarian School of the region and the elite of the «forcados de Santarém» usually met to socialize). In this way, the pastry shop paid homage to the Ribatejo people linked to the best known ex Libris of Ribatejo: the bull and the horse.

Use: Like all cakes, it is consumed at any time of the day.

Know-how: Knead the flour, eggs and sugar until a dough is formed. The dough is then flattened very thinly, with a rolling pin, and cut into rectangles that will envelop the filling. Then brush the rectangles twice with the egg yolk mixture and bake in the oven for 10 min at 400 °C.

Source: Produtos Tradicionais Portugueses, Lisboa, DGDR, 2001