Make this Brazo de Reina today. It’s a treasured dessert or snack in Chile. This recipe is the traditional melt-in-your-mouth cake with Dulce de Leche filling. You are going to love it!
This recipe is long overdue, but I tried different jelly roll recipes, and they didn’t do it for me. Not soft enough. But when I read this recipe in the excellent blog Kanela y Limón, I thought this was it! And I was right—the difference: no baking powder.
Brazo de Reina is a confection that, similar to Empanadas, has its version in almost every country in Latin America. It can be called Pionono. And the filling will change.
What is the traditional filling of the Brazo de Reina?
The cake is a vanilla flavor in Chile, and the filling is Dulce de Leche. You can be a little more creative with the decoration, just dusting powdered sugar, a mix of dried shredded coconut and powdered sugar, or a mix of chopped walnuts and powdered sugar.
Why is it called Brazo de Reina?
We have no idea. The literal translation is “Queen’s arm.” In Chile, nuns produced most of the old bakery items in convents. Also, Chile was a colony of Spain, so maybe they thought it was an appropriate name for a delicate cake.
What Dulce de Leche do you recommend?
This is an important question; the most traditional will be a canned Dulce de Leche, La Lechera brand (made in Chile) Amazon affiliated link. Easy to find in Latino markets in the USA. I don’t recommend using Argentinian Dulce de Leche; they are very heavy on vanilla flavor and distracting for Chilean purposes.
Where and when do Chileans eat Brazo de Reina?
In Chile, it’s common to see and buy a slice of Brazo de Reina in bakeries and eat it on the go as a snack. As a homemade pastry, it’s usually something for a special occasion like Sunday Once (tea time) or even for a birthday party in place of a more traditional cake.
I found this brazo de reina easy to make, roll, and fill—100% recommended. You can double the recipe to make two. For this occasion, I filled one with lemon curd and the other with dulce de leche and coconut.
Maybe you also like this recipe: Dulce de Leche Mousse.
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Brazo de Reina Chilean Dulce de Leche Roll
A perfect adittion to a dessert table. Spongy and sweet.
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 10
Ingredients
- 50 grams of milk (by weight)
- 50 grams of canola oil (by weight)
- 4 eggs
- 70 grams of sugar, 20 and 50 separately
- 80 grams of all-purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- 1 can of dulce de leche, I used La Lechera, easy to find on Latino markets
- coconut and icing sugar to decorate
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325F or 160C.
- Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper. You can use a standard jelly roll pan or a half-sheet pan (18 x 13 inches).
- Separate the eggs. In one large bowl, mix the whites and a pinch of salt. In another large bowl, mix the yolks, 20 grams of sugar, milk, oil, and flour with a balloon whisk until it looks like a batter.
- Beat egg whites until white, add sugar, and beat to a soft peak meringue (see photo).
- Mix both carefully.
- Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. Spread in an even layer of around 1/2 inch thick.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden.
- Remove from the oven and turn onto another sheet of parchment paper. Peel off the paper on top and roll using the new paper. Allow cooling.
- When cool, unroll and spread the dulce de leche, covering the entire cake. If it is thick and hard to spread, heat on medium in the microwave (out of the can) for 1 minute.
- Rollback and sprinkle with powdered sugar and coconut. Slice and serve.
Notes
Recipe from the blog Kanela y Limón
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: Sweets
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Chilean
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 331
- Sugar: 27.9 g
- Sodium: 318.6 mg
- Fat: 17.3 g
- Saturated Fat: 9.3 g
- Carbohydrates: 38.1 g
- Fiber: 2 g
- Protein: 7 g
Hi! What size baking sheet did you use for this recipe?
I use a half sheet pan (18 x 13 inches) but don’t extend the batter all the way every time.
The thickness is important and how much batter you get varies because of other factors (volume of eggs, temperature of the kitchen, etc).
The thickness you want is around 1 cm or 1/2 inch.