Argentina celebrates the week of the alfajor, its most consumed candy

Argentina celebrate the alfajor weeka treat that, together with mateis part of the culture of the country and is souvenir required for anyone who travels the territory, since almost each province has its own way of manufacturing them.

I’m coming from Spain and is the cousin of Andalusian alfajor which is still manufactured today, but its origin dates back to the arabswhich makes more than 700 years They inhabited the lower and middle areas of the peninsula Iberianthey called him ‘al-hasu’ or stuffed, in Arabic.

Over time the term was deformed and in Argentina it was given sandwich shapetransforming into the Argentine love at first sightwhich today allows the deployment of hundreds of companies dedicated to producing and selling this candy.

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Its consumption exceeds the current population of the country, which with 45 million inhabitantsin 2021 it has been sold more than 6 million per day and it is expected that for this year it reaches 10.5 millionaccording to data from the Association of Distributors of Candies, Cookies and Related Products (ADGyA) from Argentina.

alfajor week It began on May 1 and will end on the seventh of that month.where manufacturers will offer Discounts and promotions of this iconic sweet at an event that started in 2017 and gained worldwide recognition.

“It is where the harshest winter begins and when does easter end, where here in Argentina chocolate eggs are consumed. Traders auction off their latest products and people go to the alfajores”, explained to Efe Guillermo Vera, manufacturer of the Haedo handmade alfajoresname he took from his city, in the province of Buenos Aires.

Vera started the company on the initiative of his wife and to survive the winter of 2015, since before he had an ice cream parlor.

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The hallmark of the Haedo alfajores are two small tapas with a lot of filling of caramel, another traditional delicacy of the country. “We started selling in retail, but they were liquidated in a week and we went from being a small business to manufacturing them on a large scale throughout the country,” said Vera.

Each province creates them with different characteristics in their elaboration: in addition to dulce de leche and chocolate bathsthey can have flavors fruit trees, peanut paste or moussethe type of dough used also varies and the custom is to accompany them with mate or coffee.

However the alfajor made with cornstarch -whose tapas are made from corn starch, filled with dulce de leche and grated coconut around the joint-, “are in the hearts of Argentines,” Vera defined. Perhaps because its consumption is related to the pre and post colonial era.

The best-selling alfajores

From 1980, the alfajor breaks into the kiosks of Argentina in an industrial way, although the artisan ones are not relegated, its fordist manufacturing allows it to be easily distributed and to vary the size with two and three lids.

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The Union of Kiosqueros of the Argentine Republic (UKRA) in a survey carried out for the Clarín newspaper, in which 112,000 kiosks from all over the country participated, established a ranking for this year with the best sellers.

First place goes to the Alfajores Guaymallen Due to its wide distribution and low cost, it is followed Jorgito with dulce de leche filling and chocolate coatingwhile in third place it was Toffee with similar characteristics.

In fourth place was the Alfajor cake type of the Águila companywhich in addition to having the classic sweet also has cream with a spongy dough, while the Milka’s Oreos and three tapas finished in fifth position, filled with the characteristic white filling of the biscuit and the famous dairy product.