Pastelitos, por favor

Pastries, all-occasion cakes, Latin convenience store

8290 Siegen Lane, Suite C

636-2452

Open daily, 8 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Maria Garcia brings out a large tray of neatly arranged pineapple pastelitos, round, filled tarts topped with a tidy, crimped crust. She places it next to a sheet of conchas, large and golden-baked with spiral designs. Next, loaves of French bread emerge from the kitchen, followed by cinnamon-rich churros and a pound cake-like torta poroza.

Customers file in, many to buy tamarind soda or international phone cards, but they can’t resist the pastry cases up front at Las Delicias Bakery, populated by the sweets Garcia and husband Rodrigo Parada grew up eating in their native El Salvador. Garcia takes orders in Spanish, packs the treats in plastic boxes and sends them on their way. Parada mixes, stirs, and kneads in the back, sliding tray after tray in and out of the oven, seven days a week.

“My customers tell me they’re glad to have something like this,” Garcia says. “It reminds them of home.”

That means the signature yeast breads, cookies and pastries of Latin America, defined less by chocolate and more by various sweet doughs often filled with cream or fruit and embellished in traditional fashion. Classic shapes include large domes, crescents, “ears,” and donuts. There are cakes as well, including banana upside-down cake, strawberry jellyroll and a sumptuous version of the milk-soaked tres leches.

Garcia’s brothers moved to Baton Rouge nearly 15 years ago. They first opened a Chinese restaurant, then later El Maguey, located two doors down, and Sarita’s on Bennington Avenue. They encouraged Garcia and Parada to open a bakery and convenience store, which the couple launched in January 2007.

Pastries, all-occasion cakes, Mexican diner

6166 Florida Boulevard

922-9485

Open Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.

Friday, 7:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.

Saturday, 8 a.m. – 10 p.m.

Sunday, 8 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.

Earlier this year, another Latin bakery, El Paste Dorado, opened across town on Florida Boulevard. Owner Victor Canales, a Mexico native and former cook at Zoe’s Kitchen, was ready to offer something new.

El Paste Dorado doubles as a hole-in-the-wall diner serving authentic fare and a serve-yourself bakery, complete with trays of donuts, horn-shaped buns in bright yellow, ear-shaped discs topped with cinnamon, and oversized, dense butter cookies, some topped with colored sprinkles, others with coconut. As at Las Delicias, the pastries aren’t marked, so the customer must engage the proprietor to learn what makes each special.

“This is an ojo,” Canales says, pointing to a disc of butter cake surrounded by flaky pastry. It’s soft, pleasing and not overly sweet. Also, it’s huge.

Some sweets are traditionally made with rice flour, others without eggs. And a master recipe of sweet dough can be manipulated into several different pastries with the addition of different fillings, toppings, or even, says Garcia, by changing the shape.

“When I make it this way,” she says, pointing to the popular sweet quesadilla, “it tastes different.”