Sweet Tamale Cakes with Salsa Verde & Pico
- January 2023
- By Michelle Ezratty Murphy
- Recipe from Mexico
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”Tamale cakes are the perfect food. They are savory and sweet. They can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner or as a snack,” says Michelle Ezratty Murphy, one of our favorite homecooks and the 2021 Familia Kitchen Grand Prize Recipe Contest winner. Married to a Puerto Rican, Michelle has made it her business to master his family dishes and learn to make his favorite Boricua (including her life-changing prize-winning arroz con pollo) and other Latino dishes.
Tamale cakes are ”great as a side dish or as the whole meal,” Michelle adds. ”And they’re an amazing and fun dish for the vegetarians in your life. Though, trust me, everyone will love them, including your meat-loving friends.”
”I was inspired to make tamale cakes when some of my cooking-class students asked to learn how to make them,” Michelle says. (Were they thinking of the legendary sweet corn cakes made famous by The Cheesecake Factory, we wonder?) In any case, Michelle went into her Phoenix area kitchen to experiment and came out with this winning recipe that her class of cooking students gobbled up.
[Quick note here from the grammarian at Familia Kitchen. This Tex-Mex dish should be called either tamales or tamal cakes, since tamale is not a word. But tamale cakes is what everyone calls this dish, so we shall — grudgingly — leave it as is.]
”Unlike the traditional tamal, which is made with pork, beef or chicken,” says Michelle, ”the main ingredient in tamale cakes is corn, whole and pureed, which is then mixed with masa harina and flour. It’s important to use sweet corn and make sure that it’s frozen when you cook with it. This gives the cakes a thick texture, somewhat like tamales masa. When topped with pico de gallo and salsa verde, these tamale cakes offer the perfect balance between sweet and savory.”
To take them to the next level of delicioso, she adds, ”Serve tamale cakes with my Southwestern creamy sauce, which I make with Mexican crema or sour cream,” says Michelle. ”I also top them with pico de gallo and green salsa, which is a must.” Michelle swears by the salsa recipe of Familia Kitchen homecook Anjie Villalobos. ”She makes two kinds of salsa verdes — one is the traditional green salsa and the other adds avocado — and I love both,” says Michelle. “For these tamale cakes, you can use either.”
One last reason why this dish is perfección? “Tamale cakes can be eaten any time of the year, but my favorite time to make them is winter because they remind me of comfort food,” Michelle says. “When served with pico de gallo, they feel more summery because of the bright flavors of the lime and cilantro.”
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