Chocotejas, confections from the desert

When Rosalia, a humble woman from Ica, started making tejas in her house to earn some money, she didn’t even dream that a day would come when her sweets would be so famous that people would travel all the way there to buy them. Originally made with pecans, thick manjarblanco (dulce de leche), and covered with white fondant, tejas have a distinctive flavor, only found in this small city, 300 kms to the south of Lima.

One of the secrets to Rosalia’s delicious results was this slow-cooked manjarblanco, made in a huge copper pot over a big fire, stirring raw milk and sugar with a really long wooden stick, for hours. Very hard work for a woman to endure, considering the high temperatures in this city which is located right in the middle of the desert.

After Rosalia, Elena Soler became the biggest name of the next generation of tejas superstars. This extremely creative lady, was a socialite from Ica, and believe it or not, the mother of 7 kids. When she found herself with an empty nest, her kids all grown up, she decided to start a business to keep herself busy. Her first confection to become a commercial success was a toffee family recipe that she started selling in Sears, and also amongst her friends.

When she realized how fast  her sweets sold, she decided to expand the business and started making other recipes, amongst them truffles, her famous pecan roll (dulce de leche and pecans covered in chocolate), tejas,and later, chocotejas (tejas covered in chocolate, instead of the traditional fondant). The craze over her products was such, that she opened several stores in Peru, and even in Miami.

Named after her, her chocolate business took the teja´s world by storm, and every year more and more stores started to sell different kinds of chocotejas all over Lima, to the point that now you can find them in almost every corner store, with fillings like lemon, orange peel, prunes, raisins and Pisco, walnuts, figs, guava, lucuma, passion fruit, and the list goes on…

I don’t know who invented the wonderful tejas. All I know is that they are originally from Ica, and people from Lima used to buy them when they visited this town, because they were hard to find elsewhere. The first time I tried them was in Ica, of course, when someone offered one to me after a day touring the wine vineyards of the region. It was love at first taste.

My favorites have always been the ones filled with dried figs or candied lemons, and I used to take the fondant off and eat only the filling, because they were far too sweet for my taste. For most people, however, the sweetness point of tejas is ideal and they can eat many of them at a time. After years of eating them and loving them, one day I decided to try and immitate the recipe, and to my surprise, they were incredibly easy to make. 

Some cooks like to make them free-hand, but you can find teja molds in the market if you want them all to be uniform in size and shape. Either way, they are an amazing treat!

What do you need to make chocotejas?

  1. Melted dark chocolate
  2. Manjarblanco
  3. Pecans, walnuts, raisins macerated in Pisco, candied orange or lemon peel, prunes…

Preparation:

  •  Cover the molds with melted chocolate.
  • When the chocolate is firm and dry, fill with manjarblanco and pecans or any other filling. Cover with more chocolate and put in the fridge.
  • Unmold and wrap carefully in silk paper.
  • Your chocotejas are ready!

If you don´t have the molds, put a tablespoon of manjarblanco between two pecan halves, cover with melted chocolate, and cool in the fridge.

This recipe is part of the Food of the Month Club, @ La Cocina de Leslie.


Comments

  1. O-M-G. ¡Qué rico se ve! I need to try these.

  2. Since I probably won’t be making them, do tell where I can find those cute little packages!!?!? I love the fig and guava filled ones… at least the sound of them! Que cute!

  3. I may have gained 5 pounds just looking at the pictures. 🙂

    • The beauty of them is that they’re very small. So you can enjoy one without guilt. Now the problem is when you can’t stop eating them like me…

  4. mmmmm las quiero con nuezes! nom.

  5. nuezes? nueces. it’s been awhile since a spanish grammar class. 🙂

  6. Wow.. nada más con ver las fotografías creo que romperé la dieta.. Nice !!!

  7. What I really need to know is if you will wrap those up and ship to me??!! Wow…que deliciosos se ven!!! Y me encantó la historia de Ica.

  8. What a great story! And it’s so funny. I never thought to make chocolates at home but again, your recipe and photographs make it look like something even I could do!

  9. Que delicia. I’m not big fan of chocolate and these look ggoooooood!

    • You’re not???? I think you need to hang out with us more often so we convert you! 😀
      You could try the fondant covered tejas instead. Same delicious result, without the chocolate.

  10. Ay, que rico!!! Quiero probar cada uno de estos deliciosos chocotejas! Thank you so much for linking up with my Food of the Month Club. 🙂

  11. These look really impresssive – as good as something you would buy in a shop. I loved reading about the history of them too.

  12. Los chocolates son mi gran debilidad!! los he preparado con bizcocho de chocolate y ron, cerezas marinadas en amaretto , Mmm!

  13. They are delicious!!! I make them for my friends as a Christms present and they all love it! Just one more thing, “el manjarblanco” is very similar to “dulce de leche” that you can find in many mexican stores. 🙂 Hhhmm now I want some chocotejas!

  14. Perfect fathers’/mothers’ day recipe! My parents love chocolates with jellies and nuts but the boxed American kind are mostly gelatin, so they have more of a marshmallow consistency and skimp on the flavor.

  15. Jesenia Williams says:

    OMG!!! Que ricura! Se ven deliciosos… Espero intentar hacerlos 🙂 Gracias por escribir sobre estos chocotejas. Quiciera saber donde puedo encontrar estos moldes y si me puedes dar el link. Porfavor.

    Can’t wait to make them for Valentine’s Day! My husband, family & friends will love them, I’m sure! 🙂

    • Gracias, Jesenia. Los moldes los compramos en Lima, pero puedes hacerlos sin molde juntando dos mitades de pecanas con una cucharada de manjarblanco y bañando con chocolate derretido. Esta es la manera tradicional de hacerlos pues los moldes son relativamente recientes. Nos cuentas cómo te quedaron!!

  16. We import Tejas and Chocotejas from the Helena Factory in Ica Peru and ship them globally. In addition, they are featured by AA first class service. We hope to indulge you.

  17. De que material son los moldes, cual es el precio y donde los puedo conprar?

  18. Do you know where I can buy the molds you show in the recipe?

  19. Alejandro Morales says:

    Hola una consulta donde puedo comprar moldes para chocotejas, muchas gracias

  20. Holaaa
    Vivo en Belgica y me encanto tu receta.
    Aqui NO EXISTE ESE MOLDE. Pero encontre alguien que podría hacerla pero necesitan el codigo del molde que estq ubicado en la esquina. Muy chiquito. Podrias darme una mano para ver si aqui la consigo. Sin ellas no podre practicar con tu receta.
    Muero por prepararlas.

Trackbacks

  1. […] of the desert. The people are nice, the food is great and I think I have a crippling addiction to Chocotejas. They even celebrated my mom’s birthday, which I think was super […]

Leave a Reply to Jeannette Quiñones- Cantore Cancel reply

*