The best artisan buns for back to school. Nostalgia for the 80’s and 90’s

Back to school is something that has made every child’s hair stand on end for decades. In the 80’s it was preceded by those hateful ads from a well-known shopping mall that warned that summer was over, and that only a shiny new backpack could compensate for such a magnificent drop in spirits. But, there was another compensation to make up for the nonsense that was back to school: homemade buns for snack time.

Nostalgia buns

Normally, in the 80s and 90s, it was common to find in the backpacks, among colored pencils and notes made a burruño, a sandwich of ham or sausage wrapped in shiny silver paper. Sometimes, we were even given a piece of fruit, which was an absolute bummer, especially if your classmates had suffered a different fate.

That luck could be, once a week, a piece of chocolate with bread, a fluffy doughnut, a chocolate palm, a chocolate pepito, a chocolate horn… or anything that had extra sugar and lots of chocolate. It was a special day, one of those days when you looked forward to playtime, and where your friends looked at you with unhealthy envy and stopped being your friends if you didn’t invite them to at least a piece of the delicacy.

Artisan buns for back to school

But not all the buns were good, some were especially delicious. Those in which you could tell that the baker had put more interest than the salary deserved, had put love, care, and perhaps a little more chocolate than usual. Those were everyone’s favorite.

The memory of those chocolate nuggets filled with pastry cream that came out of the sides, and the chocolate on top that crunched when bitten. The sidelong glance of my classmates who were waiting for me to treat them to a Moorish, always with a finger pointing, with millimetric precision, the exact centimeter to where you were allowed to sink your teeth without destroying your heavenly ambrosia. But perhaps there is a special affection for the chocolate horns, where the liquid chocolate spilled out when you bit into it and filled your fingers, your body and your mind with an overdose of sugar and a face of satisfaction that lasted a long time. It was like going up to heaven and taking a detour through the clouds until you returned to take the next bite.

Sweets full of memories

And what is there to say about sugar palms that is not in the annals of late 20th century history? Those toasted and crunchy edges that we all fought over but were only the property of their owner, unless you were one of the few who preferred the soft and juicy inside of the palm tree. In those years taste was everything, and also size, because it was always small.

The taste of back-to-school buns is the taste of nostalgia. A taste that when you taste again as an adult you don’t remember in the same way, because now you notice the excess sugar and, over your head and love handles, you feel the remorse of having eaten a bun loaded with calories all by yourself.

Casa Mira. A bakery with centuries of tradition

Few are the places where you can still find those sweets loaded with memories. Nowadays, trans fats and palm fats are more common and, far from the shop window, they are usually displayed, with half melted chocolate wrapped in a plastic bag, in fast food stores. However, we can still find some places where we can work the miracle of going back to school with a good old-fashioned pastry.

This is the case of Casa Mira, a bakery specialized in nougat but also known for its exquisite cakes and sweets. Each product of Casa Mira is the result of decades of experience and passion for handmade pastries. Not without reason is one of the local “Suppliers of the Royal House” for centuries. Its nougat factory was supplier of the Spanish Royal House during the reigns of Isabel II, Amadeo of Savoy, Alfonso XII, the Regency of Maria Cristina and Alfonso XIII. So, I imagine that more than one future king will also have been looked sideways by his companions when taking out of his backpack a good chocolate bun from Casa Mira.