Pionono

Pionono de Santa Fe is a small sweet made in Santa Fe, near Granada in southern Spain. A thin sponge is rolled into a cylinder and soaked with syrup, then topped with piped cream that is browned. Holding one in its paper cup, you can feel the moist weight of the sponge.

Combining thin sponge with syrup and cream

In one home recipe, eggs and sugar are whisked, then combined with flour, cornstarch and milk, and the batter is baked thinly on a baking sheet. The cooled sponge is soaked in syrup, spread thinly with egg cream, cut into narrow strips, and each strip is rolled up. The cream holds the layers of the roll together, and the rest is piped on top. Sprinkling sugar and caramelizing the surface creates a toasty layer over the smooth top.

Because the rolled sponge is thin, the syrup easily soaks through to the center. Browning the cream on top adds a toasty note to the rich sweetness of the eggs. In Granada, piononos are not only made as small sweets; some shops also serve large pionono cakes for celebrations.

A shop’s account of a sweet modeled on the figure of a pope

Casa Isla, a confectionery in Santa Fe, relates that its founder, Ceferino Isla, opened a workshop in 1897 and later created a sweet named after Pope Pius IX. In the shop’s account, the cylinder, its paper wrapping and the browned cream are likened to the figure of the pope. On the other hand, there are also earlier records of a sweet called “pionono.” The age of the name and the origin of the present-day Santa Fe form are separate matters.

Savory piononos in Latin America too

The name pionono has also spread to Latin America, where in some regions it refers to dishes made by rolling thin sponge around sweet or savory fillings. One picnic example presented by the City of Buenos Aires is a savory pionono in which ham, cheese, tomato, carrot and other ingredients are rolled in a thin sheet of sponge and sliced to serve. Even under the same name as the small sweet from Santa Fe, the shape of the sponge and the fillings vary widely.

Glossary