Ka’I Ladrillo: Dessert from Paraguay

 

Ka I Ladrillo Dessert: What is it?

Paraguayan desserts are all of a big caloric content, because after the War of Paraguay against the Triple Alliance, the country was left in a very poor condition, not enough food for everybody, so they had to increase calories in their diets as the little they could eat would give them enough energy for the whole day. Therefore, their cooking has a high content of proteins and their desserts a high content of calories.
They also have very interesting names. And though in our days some of their favorite desserts are canned fruits or fresh fruits, let’s look into some of their more interesting desserts and learn about their names.

Let’s prepare ka’i ladrillo or, also called azukapé manduví. These guaraní words stand for “sugar” and “peanut”.
The word Ka’i goes for a monkey (ka’i mirikina) who loves very sweet things. Ladrillo means “brick” because of the shape this dessert takes.

Ka I Ladrillo Dessert: Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup molasses
½ cup of toasted peanuts
(1/4 cup of bitter orange juice if you choose to add it)

Preparation:

Put the molasses in a pan, take it to a boil, stirring all the time, until you can see the bottom of the pan when you pass the wooden spoon (always better with a wooden spoon!). Then drop in the peanuts and cook this preparation four more minutes. Drop this in any molds you prefer, better if they are flat ones, damped with cold water, Let them cool and take it out of the molds and serve them! If you prefer, you can add some fruit juice, be it orange or other that you choose to give an extra flavor to it, while still boiling it.
This recipe should be enough for three servings, you can double it if you want to make more of it.