Fresas con Crema Galette
Fresas con Crema Galette
A classic Mexican street dessert gets the “fresa” treatment
You can call me fresa.
I have long defended being called “fresa” and fighting the negative connotation of the term because it literally saved me from messing up my life. The term "fresa" (literally meaning "strawberry") is often used to refer to someone in Mexico who is perceived as being part of the upper class. Growing up in Puerto Vallarta in the 2000s, being called fresa meant challenging the statistic of being a young girl in the city with the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Mexico.
I had few options, and staying away from the insane club scene, the bad boys, and the drugs that so many of my friends got sucked into turned me into the girl that hung out alone at Biblioteca Los Mangos (local library) where I devoured Octavio Paz and Juan Rulfo’s literary works. When the library closed, I’d take the bus to the end of the malecón (boardwalk) past the clubs and the drunk tourists to the area where street food lines up an entire strip with the ocean as the backdrop.
There were always esquites, pescado y camarón en vara (grilled fish and shrimp on a stick), pastel imposible (chocolate cake layered with flan), fried plantains with condensed milk, and cups of fresas con crema shining under the fluorescent lights. Fresas con crema is nothing but macerated strawberries folded with sweetened whipped cream to the brim of a cup. It’s still one of my favorite fruit desserts. But for this recipe, I swapped the whipped cream for my childhood addiction: crema pastelera.
My mom is an incredible cook AND baker. I have no idea how she learned to make crema pastelera, aka pastry cream, but she made it often enough to have in hand to layer it into everything and anything. If it was my lucky day, she’d serve me a coffee mug overflowing with thick pastry cream. I ate it like pudding in all of its room temp glory. For this galette, the pastry cream calls for cornstarch to hold up its structure to the juicy macerated strawberries.
This galette dough is so easy and forgiving. The butter is worked a little bit more into the dough than the butter in a traditional pie crust. This creates a more sturdy crust that it’s not as flaky, but it’s still perfectly tender and sturdy enough if you favor fruit desserts and that crust-to-fruit perfect bite.
¡Viva la niña fresa!