Xuixo

Break open the sugar-coated yeast dough, and pale yellow custard appears like a thick core. This Girona sweet, whose name is rendered in Japanese as both shushu and shuisho, is made by rolling dough around cream, closing both ends, and then frying it in oil. The yeast dough and the custard are prepared separately and made into an elongated single-serving sweet. Two accounts have taken root in the city: an origin story that the city celebrates as beginning in 1918, and a jester legend that traces the name to the sound of a sneeze.

Rolling Cooled Cream in Chilled Dough and Closing the Ends

The base is a yeast dough that combines wheat flour, yeast, sugars and other ingredients. The use of eggs and fat varies by formulation. Cream is placed on the rolled-out dough, which is then rolled up to enclose it. Because flat dough is formed into a tube, the cut surface reveals overlapping layers of dough surrounding the filling. When dough holding yeast bubbles is heated in oil, the outside browns and the inside puffs up softly.

The seams of the dough are closed, shaping it so that the cream does not leak out during frying. When the outside turns golden, it is drained of oil and rolled in sugar. A thin layer of white sugar grains clings to the fried surface; the first bite brings the sugar and the fried crust, followed by the flavor and texture of the cream.

Catalonia’s regional food inventory describes a method in which a thin dough, which also contains powdered milk and eggs, is rolled out, filled with cream, rolled up, and has both ends folded inward. The shape is thick in the center and somewhat tapered at the ends, and the surface retains folds from rolling the dough.

In the published recipe (the ingredient proportions and method) of the cook Rocío Arroyo, wheat flour, water, butter, sugar, fresh yeast, salt and lemon zest are kneaded together. The dough is rested, shaped into individual balls and refrigerated, and the cream is wrapped only after it too has cooled. Egg yolks are used in the cream filling, and the dough is made without eggs.

Custard That Is Easy to Wrap, and a Variety of Fillings

The typical filling is a custard made by heating milk, egg yolks, sugar, and starch or flour, among other ingredients. It is flavored with vanilla or similar, thickened, and then cooled. When it is made firm enough not to run as the dough is rolled, the cream can be enclosed like a thick core.

Today, some are also filled with chocolate, apple, a fibrous sweet fruit preserve called cabell d’àngel, or other fillings. Recuits Nuri, a family business in Ullastret, also presents a xuixo filled with recuit de drap made from local goat’s milk. Even when wrapped in dough and fried the same way, the use of local ingredients makes the filling different. The crunch of the sugar on the outside stays the same, while the richness and aroma of the filling can be varied with the ingredients used.

The Puig Pastry Shop, Credited with Its Birth in 1918, and the City’s Centennial Celebration

The city of Girona celebrated 2018 as the xuixo’s centennial and presented an account of its origin holding that it is thought to have been born in 1918 at the Puig pastry shop in the city. A commemorative plaque was placed at the shop’s former location, and a pastry makers’ competition and demonstrations were also held. It is an effort by the city to commemorate and pass on the history of a local sweet.

The city’s tourist guide for children also introduces the possibility that a French cream pastry called chou à la crème provided a clue to its creation. This explanation suggests the possibility that, taking inspiration from cream-filled choux, local makers changed the method to rolling and frying yeast dough.

A Method Inherited from Puig’s Pastry Makers, and Refinements to the Formula

What connects the Puig shop with today’s pastry makers is not only a commemorative year. Josep Maria Tornés, winner of the 2026 competition as reported by the city of Girona, says that after Puig closed, its pastry makers moved to his shop, and that the shop inherited the method from them and refined it. He himself took part in drawing up the “Ten Commandments of the Girona Xuixo” in the 1990s. In the city’s interview, he explained that he seeks a balance between the weight of the dough and the weight of the cream, and the judges also praised that balance and the lightness of the dough.

Even after the original shop closed, the technique of balancing the thickness of the dough with the amount of cream was passed on to the next shop along with the pastry makers who moved there.

A Naming Legend Tied to Tarlà’s Sneeze, and the Festival Figure

Girona also has a story linking a figure named Tarlà with the sweet. According to the city’s explanation of its spring festival, tradition holds that he performed acrobatics to entertain the residents of Carrer de l’Argenteria, which had been quarantined because of the plague, and today a figure of him is still hung from a pole stretched across the street and spun to recreate the scene. In the city’s educational materials, Tarlà came to see a pastry maker’s daughter, hid in a sack of flour and was discovered when he sneezed. To win her father’s forgiveness, he promised to teach him how to make a sweet that no one yet knew, and that sweet was named xuixo after the sound of the sneeze.

Xuixos Served to Charity Walk Participants

The xuixo also lends its name to a charity walk held by the Oncolliga Girona Foundation, which supports cancer patients and their families. At the 2025 “Marxa del Xuixo,” participants who walked in the Girona area were served xuixos provided by a regional pastry makers’ association and bakeries. Besides being eaten at breakfast or as an afternoon snack, the xuixo also has a place at local events that support patients and their families.

Glossary