Name: Cornstarch Alfajores
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Rioplatense / Latinoamericana
Ingredients: 200 g cornstarch; 150 g all-purpose flour; 300 g dulce de leche (pastry grade); 100 g butter (room temperature); 50 g shredded coconut

Cornstarch Alfajores

Crumbling discs, dulce de leche and coconut: the River Plate alfajor. The secret is gluten-free cornstarch, giving that melt-in-the-mouth crumb.

45 min Medium Rioplatense / Latinoamericana 12 servings

Oddly enough, this thoroughly River Plate sweet carries an Arabic name: "alfajor" descends from the Arabic al-hasú, "the filling," a legacy of Spain's Moorish centuries that crossed the Atlantic with colonization. In Argentina and Uruguay it evolved into this unmistakable form — two pale, crumbling discs joined by dulce de leche and rimmed in shredded coconut. The texture's secret lies in an inverted flour ratio, with more cornstarch than wheat flour. Cornstarch has no gluten, so it lends structure without elasticity, producing that sandy crumb that dissolves on the tongue instead of a firm cookie. That's why the dough is handled as little as possible: overworking would develop what little gluten the wheat flour has and cost you the fragility. A pastry-grade dulce de leche, thicker than the everyday kind, holds the discs together without oozing, and the shredded coconut clings to the moist rim of exposed filling. This is the sweet of afternoon merienda, kitchen-drawer treats and corner kiosks across the region. Try them with coffee or mate; they collapse at the first bite, leaving the caramel at the center.