Polvoron

Polvolicious

A polvorón (From polvo, the Spanish word for powder, or dust; Cebuano: polboron; Tagalog:pulburón) is a type of heavy, soft and very crumbly Spanish shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts. They are produced mostly in Andalusia, where there are about 70 factories in that are part of a syndicate that produces polvorones and mantecados. Under the name mantecados, these sweets are a traditional preparation of other areas of the Iberian Peninsula as well.

Polvorones are popular holiday delicacies in all Spain and its former colonies in Latin America and the Philippines. Traditionally, they were prepared from September to January but are now available all year round. Polvorones were brought to Spain by the Moors and there is thus a very possible Levantine origin, based on a similar sweet known as ghurayba. As this was introduced by the Arabs, during the Spanish Inquisition, it was later decreed by the officials of the Inquisition that polvorones were to be made using pork fat as a means of detecting secret Jews and Muslims within the Southern Spanish regions.

Ingredients:

                                             All-Purpose Flour

All-purpose flour (also called enriched wheat flour) is the most commonly used flour in recipes and packaged foods like cookies, crackers, breads, and tortillas, but it's not the best for you. All-purpose flour is refined from whole-wheat flour, and during the process most of the fiber and nutrients are removed. By switching to breads and other products made with whole-wheat flour, you’ll increase the fiber and nutrition in your diet. If you're not ready to go 100 percent whole wheat in your cooking and baking, substitute whole-wheat flour for up to half the white flour in recipes to bump up the nutrition without significantly affecting taste or texture. If you have celiac disease, look for flours made from wheat-free and gluten-free grains like rice, buckwheat, potato, and corn.

 All-purpose flour is by far the most common flour found in the United States. It is a combination of hard and soft wheat. All-purpose flour usually contains about 8 to 11 percent gluten, the predominant protein in wheat flour. All-purpose flour is usually bleached or unbleached. Bleached flour is chemically treated and contains less protein than unbleached flour. Bleached flour is ideal for pie crusts, cookies, pancakes, quick breads and waffles. Unbleached flour is typically used for yeast breads and pastries such as puff pastries, éclairs, strudel and cream puffs.

  Sugar 

Sugar is the generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. They are carbohydrates, composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. There are various types of sugar derived from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose (also known as dextrose), fructose and galactose. The table or granulated sugar most customarily used as food is sucrose, adisaccharide. (In the body, sucrose hydrolyses into fructose and glucose.) Other disaccharides include maltose and lactose. Longer chains of sugars are called oligosaccharides. Chemically-different substances may also have a sweet taste, but are not classified as sugars. Some are used as lower-calorie food substitutes for sugar described as artificial sweeteners.

Sugar can have many positive effects on your life and metabolism. Here they are:

Calorie content – Sugar has a high calorie content that will give your body energy that you lack. However, all that energy is short lived and it can only give your short bust of increased productivity. Because sugar contains four calories per gram, but it lacks nutritious value (no dietary fibers) and because of that sugar is only an added ingredient in many meals.

Diabetes – Scientists have proven that diabetes is a genetic condition that is created from the moment we are born. Eating bad food and lots of sweets and fats can only decrease the efficiency of the pancreas, but in moderate use there are no health risks.

Skin health – Sugar’s glycolic acid can be very helpful in maintaining the health and look of your skin. Using it can help elimination blemishes and restoring the balance in the skin’s oils.

Less processed – Many people use high-fructose corn syrup as a means of sweetening their food, but that product is highly processed and can cause problems to their digestion. Sugars consist only from natural ingredients that can be processed easily by our metabolism.

Blood and insulin benefits - Many foods that have in them glucose are sweet, but our bodies (and especially liver) have larger problem disassembling glucose than fructose that can be found in sugar. Because of this, insulin levels will be greatly increased during the short periods of time, making you feel energetic and powerful. Sadly after that initial rush, drop of insulin will also make you hungry for more sweets. But that is not all. Because of the influence of sugar’s glucose has on the hormone leptin, you will indeed feel more full than after eating foods with fructose.

Minerals and nutrients – Sugars in their structure have ingredients that are passed to them from their natural sources, sugarcanes or beet. Elements such as phosphorus, calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium will not be greatly present in the industrially refined sugar.

Environment benefits – Sugar is created from natural resources without the use of pesticides and other harmful products, in a way what don pollutes environment. That is not the case with the production of the industrial artificial sweeteners.

Skim Milk

 Skimmed milk, or skim milk, is made when all the cream is removed from whole milk.

Benefits of Skim Milk:

Protien      

Skim milk provides a rich source of protein, offering 8.3 grams of protein per cup. Your body needs protein for its amino acids. You use certain amino acids to regulate brain activity, and use combinations of 20 amino acids to synthesize the proteins that make up your cells and tissues. Your specific protein needs depend on your body weight, composition and activity level, but most people need 0.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight, according to Iowa State University. A cup of skim milk provides 14 percent of your daily protein requirements if you weigh 150 pounds, or 10 percent if you weigh 200 pounds. Because of its protein content, skim milk offers a nutritional advantage over some other beverages -- for example, a glass of orange juice contains less than 2 grams of protein per cup.

Calcium and Bone Benefits

Skim milk provides a source of calcium. Several tissues in your body -- including your pancreas, muscles and nerves -- need small amounts of calcium to function. Your bones and teeth also rely on calcium, since calcium makes up a part of the mineralized tissue that keeps your bones strong and hard. Drinking a cup of skim milk increases your calcium by 299 milligrams, providing 30 percent of your daily calcium requirements, according to the Linus Pauling Institute. While most dairy products naturally contain calcium, choosing skim milk over higher-fat dairy products might offer additional benefits for your bones. People who consume more saturated fat tend to have lower bone density, according to the University of Michigan.

Vitamins A and D

Milk naturally contains the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. During the skimming process, removing the fat from skim milk also removes these vitamins. To compensate, milk manufacturers fortify the milk with vitamins A and D. Choosing fortified skim milk allows you to get vitamins A and D without the saturated fat found in higher-fat dairy products. Vitamin D helps to ensure that your body can use calcium properly. It helps you absorb the calcium from milk and also helps your body transport calcium to the tissues that need it to function. Vitamin A helps maintain healthy skin and eyes, and also nourishes your immune system. A cup of fortified skim milk contains 500 international units of vitamin A and 115 IU of vitamin D. This represents 19 percent of your RDA for vitamin D, according to the Linus Pauling Institute, as well as 21 percent of the daily vitamin A requirements for women or 17 percent for men. Different brands of skim milk might contain slightly different levels of vitamins A and D, so always check the nutrition label.

BUTTER

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fremented cream milk separated the butter from the buttermilk.It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking, such as baking, sauce making, and frying. Butter consists of butterfat, milk proteins and water

Most frequently made from cows' milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats,buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings and preservatives are sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter produces clarified butter or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat.

The 5 Health Benefits of Butter

1. Butter is an excellent source of Vitamins. 

          One of the many beneficial vitamins we get from butter is Vitamin A, which has a wide range of function for our bodies. Vitamin A is needed to maintain good vision. It also keeps our endocrine system functioning well. Aside from Vitamin A, butter also has other fat-soluble vitamins such as Vitamin D, E and K.

2. A great source for minerals. 

          Trace minerals are found in butter such as manganese, chromium, zinc, copper and selenium, which is incidentally, a powerful antioxidant. Butter contains more selenium per gram compared to herring or wheat germ. What’s more, butter is also a great source of iodine.

3. Contains healthy fatty acids. 

          You can get your dose of short and medium-chain fatty acids from butter, which are great for supporting your immune system and boosting metabolism. It even has anti-microbial properties- excellent for fighting pathogenic microorganisms that live inside the intestinal tract.

4. Perfect balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. 

          The arachidonic acid found in butter helps with brain function, skin health and prostaglandin balance.

5. Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA). 

          If your butter is sourced from cows that feed on green grass, it can contain high levels of CLA. This is a compound that can help provide protection against different types of cancer, and helps the body store muscle instead of fat.

6. Butter also has Glycospingolipids. 

          These are fatty acids that have a specific function to protect the stomach from gastrotestinal infections.

Where did the Polvoron originated?

 

Mantecado

           Montecado is a name for a variety of Spanish shortbreads that includes the polvorón. Often both names are synonymous, but not all mantecados are polvorones. The name mantecado comes from manteca, usually the fat of Iberian pig (cerdoiberico), with which they are made, while the name polvorón is based on the fact that these cakes crumble easily into a kind of dust in the hand or the mouth.

In Puerto Rico, mantecado is an ice cream and in Spain it may be also the name given to a kind of sweet sherbet.^[4] In the Philippines, mantecado is a popular and traditional ice cream flavour, characterised as a mixture of vanilla and butter. It was served during the lunchtime banquet that followed the Malolos Congress' ratification on 29 September 1898 of the Philippine Declaration of Independence made in June that year.

Regional variations

Mexico

In Mexico, these are traditionally served at weddings and celebrations. The cookies themselves are small balls usually made with pecans. They are known in the United States as "Mexican wedding cookies".

Philippines

The Filipino version of polvorón uses a large amount of powdered milk which is left dry, as well as toasted flour, and butter or margarine instead of lard. A number of local variants on the traditional polvorón recipe have been made. Well-known variants include polvorón with kasuy (cashew nut), with pinipig (pounded and toasted young green rice, similar to crisped rice) and with malunggay leaves. Strawberry, chocolate-coated, ube (purple yam), peanut, and cookies and cream flavoured polvorón also exist.

Spain

Polvorones are a common Christmas dessert in Spain. These days there are options different from pig fat, like cow fat, as well as vegetarian polvorones and mantecados made with olive oil.

Different Flavors of Polvoron

MalungayPolvoron

The malungaypolvoron is a healthy kind of polvoron because the moringa (malungay) has essential vitamins and minerals that is good to our body. Moringa is known to treat and prevent 300 diseases and very popular. For those who don't like to eat just try this desert and surely u like it and especially your kids.

ChoVron

Dual-colored food attracts me so: checkerboard cake, bull’s-eye cheesecake, and now, black and white polvoron – aka, ChocoVron.

This company has several flavors but I try the chocolate-coated variant with a cookies and cream polvoron filling. The contrast in colors reminds me of tiles on a checkerboard, the polvoron itself a mildly sweet mix. This isn’t chocolate per se, that coats the polvoron’s “voluptuousness” but a compound coating. Usually, this won’t pass muster with me – who wants to eat wax anyway? But on days when I’m in the mood for a cheap treat, this’ll do the trick.