How about Churros with a caramel or chocolate dipping sauce. Havent met a kid yet that doesnt love these!

How about burritos filled with apple pie filling?

How about empanadas, little fruit filled tarts? Or Bunuelos (I think I spelled that right), it's like a fritter or donut, kind of.

Annie

Mexican wedding cookies are yummy.

How much bother do you want? My favorite Mexican sweets are pan dulce. They're not really sugary, and they're very Mexican but not common outside of Mexican neighborhoods here. If you don't want to do the work, btw, you can buy them at any Mexican bakery. There are lots of recipes online if you Google. (It's been decades so I don't have one of my own to give you.) Pan ducle are usually pretty large, so if there are other sweets you can make them half sized.

I can't seem to find the recipe but I had a recipe for Mexican Cookies. It was basically a sugar cookie recipe with some cormeal added. The cookies were dusted with a combo of espresso powder and dark cocoa powder. The cookie were nice and moist, not too sweet. I made these for my duaghter's high school grad party a couple years ago and the kids seem to like them. The adults definitely did.

Those sound great moosemac! Go hunt for that recipe!

Flan? How old? Will they eat it? I know it's a texture thing for many. I, on the other hand, can't eat Tres Leches because of the texture....can't do wet cake.

I'm thinking if they are young, churros are the best bet.

Or chocolate cupcakes with cinnamon icing.

If the aim is to give young people their first impression of authentic Mexican food, there is one answer. Flan, the universal Mexican dessert.

Also the classic Latin American dessert, pastel de tres leches, is simply wonderful. I have the impression that, in Mexico, it takes second place to flan, but these Spanish students' interests go beyond Mexico.

An easy and always welcome dessert is dulce de leche over vanilla ice cream. You can easily find a recipe on the Internet for making dulce de leche from condensed milk. There is hardly any work involved, it is muy tipico, and everyone will enjoy it.

Jim

I spent my early childhood in Mexico and visited often throughout grade school. A typical treat was candied pumpkin. You can probably find this in a Mexican grocery store. I don't remember ever having flan though I might have. Yummy but would it be practical for your classroom? I do remember eating many fruit popsicles or chupaletas; mango, coconut, watermelon, strawberry, pineapple, orange. Rice pudding with cinnamon was another dessert I recall from childhood. I could eat my weight in warm, freshly made tortillas with wild honey or rolled up with butter and cinnamon sugar. I love pan dulces but find that they are often very dry unless you have access to a panaderia and can get them very fresh.

"I don't remember ever having flan though I might have."

It's strange that our experience is at such odds. I certainly can't question what you say. I didn't spend my early childhood in Mexico as you did. However I have travelled quite a lot in Mexico and it seemed that every restaurant dessert menu featured flan. To me, it was the apple pie of Mexico. How can this discrepancy be explained? Perhaps the difference between home cooking and restaurants? Between what kids eat and adults eat (not so likely). Between travelers and Americans living abroad? I don't know.

I agree that flan would not be the most practical dessert for the classroom, but not the least practical either if you have some experience making it. I wonder what Gail settled on.

Jim

I imagine that I didn't eat flan as a child for any number of reasons. Where we lived was fairly rural and the milk supply came straight from the cow brought around for sale by burro in buckets. As I recall my grandmother, having grown up on a dairy, thought most of it was suspect. She rarely bought milk. Most of the milk in the house was canned. Maybe it was considered restaurant fare and I don't remember there even being restaurants around. Maybe a few very rural cafes where the cooking was simple and refrigeration was iffy. This was the late 50s/early 60s. Maybe it was not the quintessential Mexican dessert it is now. My grandparents moved to Mexico when they were married in 1929 so they were well assimilated by the time I arrived. They often had servants who did some of the cooking.

I love flan. But I didn't eat flan until I had it by the name of creme caramel in a French restaurant in my 20s. :)

Sounds like you have had an interesting life, barnmom. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into it. I think those are all plausible reasons for the absence of flan in your early life. Not to mention that Mexican food varies a lot from region to region. Maybe flan was uncommon where you were.

Jim

Sounds like you have had an interesting life, barnmom. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into it. I think those are all plausible reasons for the absence of flan in your early life. Not to mention that Mexican food varies a lot from region to region. Maybe flan was uncommon where you were.

Jim

I suspect flan was a way to make "iffy" milk safe...my recipe is cooked for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
I made flan yesterday and served it to what I thought was a fairly well traveled crowd...I know they have vacationed in Cancun....and no one had ever eaten flan....you would have thought I served some exotic strange thing...
Flan with fresh strawberries....yummers!
Linda C

Here you go:
(Of course I forgot it was cinnamon and espresso not chocolate and espresso but....)

Mexican Sugar Cookies

3/4 cup Butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cornmeal

Espresso powder
Cinnamon

Directions
Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cornmeal. (I sifted only the baking powder, salt and flour then mixed in the cornmeal. This gave the cookies a coarser texture.) Add flour/cornmeal mixture to egg mixture incorporating a little at a time.
Drop by spoonful (I rolled them in to balls then flatten them slightly) onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees F until edges just turning slightly brown about 12-14 minutes. Do not overbake.
While cookies are baking mix together cinnamon and espresso powder and process in blender until itÂs a fine powder.
Immediately after removing the cookies from oven, sprinkle with espresso powder and cinnamon mixture. Cool on wire racks.
Makes 2 dozen

Too bad sticks and violence are involved as a piñata would be most fun for a bunch of little kids. :)

Dulce de leche over vanilla ice cream? All I could think about was the poor teacher who has to deal with 30 sugared up kids for the rest of the afternoon! LOL

"...sugared up kids..."

Ha! You're right!

Sugared up inside and out. What a mess!

I just remembered when my daughter was in third grade and she and I gave a Mexican food demonstration for her class. I don't remember if it was related to Cinco de Mayp or to a trip report she may have been making about a visit to Mexico. She made limonada (limeade) and I baked tortillas. She then made tacos (chicken, IIRC) using the tortillas as they came off the comal (griddle). Both were served to the class.

So, arandygail, how did it go?

Jim