Lotus cake fever invades everything: from cakes and ice cream to liqueur creams in supermarkets | Gastronomy: recipes, restaurants and drinks

It's gone from being that caramel-flavored biscuit served alongside coffee – a resistance in some bars – to becoming a new, ubiquitous flavour. Companies of all kinds have turned lotus cake into a delicious filling for croissants and cakes, a new flavor for ice cream and even a creamy supermarket liqueur. The history of this cake, which has a touch of cinnamon, began in 1932 in a Belgian bakery in Lembeek, where Jean Bon prepared a recipe in the style of Speculation (traditional spiced Christmas cake) and she had the brilliant idea of ​​wrapping it individually. These details, which may seem trivial, were the motivation behind bars starting to serve it with coffee, and in this way its distinctive flavor spread to the whole world.

Since 2021, pastry chef John García, who owns two JonCake establishments in Barcelona (29 Assaonadors Street and 42 Gelabert Street), has been making one of his famous desserts. Cheesecakes Lotus flavour. “It reminds me of the cut-and-cookie moment,” he said, thinking about that very specific flavor he had in mind when he started testing a cake to accompany coffee, and thinking about his wife not liking it. cheese. . “This flavor is at its peak now, I've even seen it in hamburgers, But it takes me back,” John admits, pointing to the number of recipe videos circulating on social media.

Your result cheese cake From Lotus is a very wonderful cake that tastes above all like biscuits – with a touch of caramel and cinnamon – and coffee, which carries the good taste of beans roasted by the Tornado Coffee Roastery. The base is made from the same cookie and the lotion also includes Lotus Cream, which is one of the latest products launched by the brand and can be compared to peanut or chocolate. At the Barcelona location on Guilabert Street, with a tasting space, it's always available and pairs well with hot chocolate or coffee. Their aromatic properties complement each other because the caramelized biscuits enhance the coffee's flavour. “I don't know if it'll be as successful as Oreo, but we're on our way,” John thinks.

It's also been made plain flavored by Abel Bravo, of Glea Bakery in Murcia (Barrionuevo Street, 4), who explains that “the lotus cake blends well with many of the other ingredients in the bakery.” On their counter there is always abelicos, a type of flaky pastry he invented with Raúl Bernal of the La Paca pastry shop in Huesca, and which has no shortage of Belgian cake flavour. the abelicos – a name in honor of his grandfather who gave it that – is made from puff pastry dough shaped into a square with a mold, and toasted with butter and sugar, before being coated with some flavour. “It's crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, and somewhat reminiscent of a waffle,” Bravo says. The lotus piece has two creams on top, one of the famous biscuit and one of caramel, all crowned with a lotus flower.

“Fat, sugar and spices blend well with caramel and flaky pastry,” explains Bravo, who also makes other products in this flavor. Cakes, biscuit also Cakes. “We are taking advantage of the strong marketing of the industry to integrate it into our 100% artisanal pastry shop,” he concludes. abelicos It spread to other Spanish pastry shops “And even Japan, London or Portugal.” In addition to lapaca, another workshop that makes it is SOCAR, in Valencia or Cabo Posto, Asturias, where this trendy flavor is also found.

Lotus cookie fever has also reached Galicia. in Amashia, With three bakeries in O Porriño and Mos, in Pontevedra province, they began two years ago filling croissants with lotus flavor, in a piece that is served with a cookie on top, says co-owner Luis Miguel Iglesia. To his wife Montse Fernandez. Since the flavor is such a success, they also tried it with New York roll When this piece of pastry imported from Cafeteria Lafayette in New York began to expand. In addition, they make a cake with the same lotus cream, which serves as the filling for their handmade sponge cake and is covered in milk chocolate.

To prepare the cream, they crush the lotus cake and mix it with butter and chocolate. “Cookie flavors are popular now,” says Iglesia, who has been making artisan breads and pastries for 20 years. Their motto is: “We make everything we sell.” It is believed that the success of this flavor should be found on social networks, where homemade and professional recipes with lotus cake as cream or filling have grown exponentially. “Some of them start, the rest of us continue, and there's no other explanation,” he says. Trends force us to work on demand.

With three stores and nearly fifty employees, he stresses that he does not want to grow further, but rather wants to continue making high-quality doughs. In fact, he himself noted the contradiction of bragging about being an artisan bakery and then relying on a somewhat artificial flavor. But “the customer is in charge and demands these types of flavours.” He says that in his stores, pastries or cakes containing Oreos are still the most consumed, especially for children and birthday parties.

The person who receives bags weighing more than seven kilograms with already broken lotus biscuits is Antonio Saviotti, from CaramelA company that produces high-quality ice cream with 100% natural ingredients for restaurants, pastries or ice cream shops (it has a store Connected for individuals). Antonio says the taste of this cake is nothing new to them. They started making it in 2012, more than ten years of producing Lotus Ice Cream.

“We make a very authentic recipe, we put a lot of thought into each flavour, and our ice cream is very high in the main ingredient,” he says. The ice cream base is a cream made of milk, sugar and cream, which in addition to the lotus cream is marbled with biscuit pieces. Think of it as just another trend, like matcha or Red velvet. But he says the sector is highly susceptible to fads because the industrial ice cream shop releases new flavors every year and forces others to innovate.

These trends also create opportunities. Caramel, mainly intended for wholesale sales, has just released a 150 gram jar for the end consumer. With three flavours currently, Tiramisu, Blackberry and Yuzu And toasted butter, this ice cream can be found in some stores that carry select products, such as El Corte Inglés Gourmet Club.

In fact, big chains are also no stranger to the lotus biscuit boom. Many of them have already taken advantage of the vein to produce products containing sweet cookies. This is how McDonald's serves Lotus McFlurry also Mercadona, which produces wines Creamy with such flavour. Lotus Bakery is still a family business headquartered in Lembeek, but its prospects have not stopped growing. They state on their website that every year they make 6 billion pieces of cake that are eaten on six continents.

You can follow EL PAÍS Gastro at Instagram And s.