Cakes in the capital

Buenos Aires has its own distinct smell. Of warm sunshine on dirty streets mixed with the delicious aroma of parilla (grilled meat) on every corner, often overridden by the sickly sweet whiff of dulce de leche-filled meringues and pastries…

Argentines are sweet-toothed carnivores. After a juicy steak lunch, there’s always space for pudding. Enticing smells seep out of the hundreds of panaderias and confiterias dotted around the capital. In the window, fussy cakes adorned with colourful candied fruit or cream, and media lunas (croissants) sprinkled with icing sugar, stuffed with dulce de leche or sunshine-yellow custard tease our taste-buds. More obscene still are the gigantic meringue pieces, stuck together with the ubiquitous dulce de leche.

Then there are the beloved yet clinical looking ice-cream parlours: men and women in white hats scoop out balls of paradise, such as banana with dulce de leche; some portenos opt for the sticky dulce de leche, chocolate or strawberry sauce to be poured on top of their mountain of ice-cream. Things aren’t just sweet in Buenos Aires, they are wickedly, sickly sweet – and me and Ed have begun to love it.