Conchas de Vainilla (Vanilla Conchas)
Photo by Emma Fishman, food styling by Pearl Jones
When Rick Martinez was a kid growing up in Texas, white conchas—the classic Mexican sweet bread with a shell-shaped sugar topping—were the most boring ones. “Why would you want white when you could have pink or yellow?” he asks. Especially, he says, when they never really tasted like anything. But once Rick tried proper conchas de vanilla from southern Mexico, he understood how flavorful the plain-seeming white concha could be. That experience is what he tried to replicate with this recipe, the key to which lies in the quality of the vanilla. If you can find Mexican paste, beans, or extract, use those. But if you can’t, use paste (we like this one from Heilala), which holds onto its flavor when heated better than extract or beans.
