A Gansito is a small Mexican snack cake, often compared to the American Twinkie. This Mexican Recipe is a strawberry jelly and crème-filled pound cake with a chocolate-flavored coating. This cake will obviously be much bigger (Gigante) than the store-bought size but it contains the same delicious ingredients.
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El Gansito Gigante ~ The Giant Gansito
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Ingredients
Cake Base:
- 1 loaf pound cake
Jelly Filling:
- 1 cup strawberry jam
- 2 tbsp corn starch
- 3 tbsp cold water
Cream Filling:
- ½ bar cream cheese
- ½ cup confectioners sugar
- ½ cup whipping cream
Icing:
- 2 cups chocolate chips
- ⅓ cup whipping cream
- chocolate sprinkles
Instructions
Cake Base:
- Cut a trinch down the middle of the pound cake. It should have 1 inch around the sides and ⅓ down into the cake.
- Remove cake from the trench and set asside.
Jelly Filling:
- Add Jelly, starch, and water to a cooking pan and mix well while heating.
- Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Cream Filling:
- In a mixing bowl add cream cheesing and confectioners sugar. Mix well until combined then add the whipping cream while continuing to mix until a light fluffy consistency is achieved.
- Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
Icing:
- In a pan slowly heat whipping cream but do not boil.
- Put the chocolate chips into a mixing bowl and pour the warm whipping cream over the chocolate and mix until all the chocolate chips are melted.
- Allow to cool for 5 or 10 minutes before using.
Assemble the Cake:
- Place filling mix into the trench filling it about halfway up.
- Place the cream mix into the trench filling it to the top.
- Pour the Icing mix over the cake. Using an icing spatula, making sure the top and sides are completely covered.
- Sprinkle the chocolate sprinkles on top.
- Place in refrigerator for 20 minutes to solidify the icing. Cut and serve.
Did You Know?
The Gansito Snack Cake was invented in Mexico City, Mexico in 1957. Alfonso Velasco invented the original recipe for the snack cake, while Victor Milke, Guadalupe Pérez, and Roberto Servitje designed the molds necessary to produce the snack cake. At first, the molds only made two Gansito Snack Cakes at a time; today’s can create 18 at the same time.
It was one of the first three, individually wrapped snack cakes produced at the Marinela factory, and the first order made at the factory was for 500 Gansito Snack Cakes which took eight hours to create.
The Gansito Snack Cake took precedence in the Marinela Brand, and Lorenzo Servitje and Jaime Jorba, two of the original founders of Grupo Bimbo and Marinela, called Gansito Snack Cakes the star of Marinela products.
Gansito Snack Cakes became Marinela’s product leader, representing 65% of all product sales. At first, it only cost consumers 80 cents, and by 1975 Marinela was selling 1 million Gansito Snack Cakes a day.
The snack cake soon became a beloved product and an all-time favorite in Mexico as Grupo Bimbo expanded through the country and created routes to even the most distant villages.
The popular Gansito Character that became a trademark of Marinela and decorates the snack cakes’ packaging was designed by Alfonso Velasco, who was one of Bimbo’s founders. Velasco also created the famous tagline, “¡Recuérdame!” which means, “Remember me!”
The dessert was first delivered by bicycles and then by unique, three-wheeled motor vans in Mexico called “ganseras.” The salesmen were nicknamed “ganseros”. The routes the ganseros sold Gansito Snack Cakes along were called, “rutas ganseras.”
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What do you do with the wedge of cake that you removed? Do you put it back in, and if so, when?
The cake that is removed to make the space for the jelly and cream filling is not used in this recipe. You can discard it, eat it, or used it for something else.