A homemade example of a traditional Cuban-style pound cake, this panetela was made with two of the greatest luxuries in the Cuban diet during the Special Period: milk and butter. I also coated and decorated with a food item whose fabled availability abroad many older Cubans nostalgically questioned: canned peaches! Most Cuban children I knew had never tasted a canned peach, let alone butter, even though the government still provided annual birthday cakes for kids through the rationing system. Made in government bakeries using vegetable oil and no milk, such cakes tasted stale to me, even though they were always freshly baked. So whenever I spotted butter in a government store (that sold goods in US dollars, not Cuban pesos), I bought it and struggled to quickly gather other ingredients for a panetela on the black market, such as eggs, flour and canned or powdered milk (fresh milk seemingly did not exist). Sharing a panetela like this with friends and family invariably evoked a recollection of historic memories, my favorite part. PUERTA DE GOLPE, PINAR DEL RIO, MARCH 1997.
