Welcome back to the Christmas Around the World Series on The Storied Recipe Podcast!

This series began as a crowd-sourced post titled Christmas Desserts Around the World. As the Storied Recipe community shared their cherished Christmas recipes and the memories surrounding them, I really wanted to hear MORE. So I decided to expand on a few of these with a little mini series about Christmas traditions all around the world. You can find the entire series here.

We begin the 2023 Christmas Around the World series with Sofie Alarcon, sharing all about Christmas in Ecuador.

This is actually an interview I tried to get last year, after Sophie shared her recipe for Pristiños, the famous Ecuadorian Christmas pastry we’ll discuss today. Sofie recalls very cold December nights high in the Andes mountains making the warmest memories with her large extended family who gathered to sing and pray, sharing blankets and hot citrus drinks to guard against the chill in their unheated homes.

As for Sofie’s recipe, these crispy Ecuadorian fried pastries shaped like a crown, this is the only recipe in the history of The Storied Recipe that I really, truly failed to properly produce!! Fortunately, Sophie’s recipe is very easy - and of course, very delicious. As a citrus lover, Sofie’s Pristinos dough gets a zest lift. The real genius is in her Piloncillo syrup, made from Panela - a dark brown evaporated cane sugar - lots of citrus zest and all the warming Christmas spices, like cinnamon, anise, and cloves. 

012 Pristinos in Ecuador with Melissa Sampedro

Melissa and I laughed a lot as she shared many stories of her life in Ecuador, from chewing on sugar cane to making pristinos to going to Nationals as a triathlete! She also educates us on the processing of sugar. I was grateful for some of her best frying tips. We also learn from Melissa how her grandmother raised 9 children on very little money and Melissa's mother taught her how to do with less. Finally, Melissa discusses the experience of living in America as a second culture and the very simple thing we can do to welcome others to our home culture.