Pionono — thin rolled sponge filled with dulce de leche

i. Origin & history

The word pionono starts in Spain. In the town of Santa Fe, just outside Granada, a pastry cook named Ceferino Isla is generally credited with creating a small sweet in the late nineteenth century and naming it in honour of Pope Pius IX, whose Italian name, Pio Nono, means 'Pius the Ninth'. The Granada pionono is a little cylinder of rolled sponge soaked in syrup, filled with cream and crowned with a cap of toasted custard, said to resemble the pope's figure. It is still the signature sweet of Santa Fe and is sold in pastry shops across Granada.

The name travelled to Latin America, but the dessert changed. In Argentina, Uruguay and Peru, a pionono is not a small individual pastry but a large, very thin sheet of sponge — and, by extension, the roll made from it. Argentine supermarkets sell ready-baked pionono sheets in plastic sleeves, precisely because the sponge is used as a base for so many things: sweet rolls with dulce de leche, layered cakes, and savoury rolls of ham, cheese, egg and mayonnaise for parties. When people search for 'what is pionono', the honest answer is that in South America it is first of all the sponge itself.

In Peru, pionono usually means a roll filled with manjar blanco, the Peruvian milk caramel, and dusted thickly with icing sugar — a bakery staple sold by the slice. In Argentina and Uruguay the classic sweet filling is dulce de leche, often with whipped cream, strawberries or peaches. Colombia and Venezuela have similar rolls, and in Puerto Rico the same name confusingly refers to a savoury ring of fried ripe plantain filled with meat.

So the three main piononos are related by name and by technique — a rolled sponge — but not interchangeable: the small syrup-soaked Granada pastry, the large Latin American sponge roll, and the Puerto Rican plantain dish. This page covers the Argentine and Peruvian sweet roll, which is the one most people mean in English.

ii. Why a pionono sponge rolls without cracking

A good pionono is thin — barely a centimetre — and supple enough to roll tightly without splitting. That depends on a sponge with no butter or oil at all, raised only by air whipped into eggs and sugar. Whisking whole eggs with sugar until they triple in volume creates a stable foam; flour is folded in just enough to give it structure. With no fat to weaken the gluten or make the crumb short, the baked sheet is elastic rather than crumbly.

Many Argentine recipes add a spoonful of honey or glucose syrup. Sugars of this kind are hygroscopic — they hold water — so the sponge stays moist and bendable after baking instead of drying at the edges. That small addition is why commercial pionono sheets can be rolled straight from the packet.

Baking time is short and critical. In a hot oven the thin layer sets in 7–9 minutes; even two extra minutes dries it out, browns the edges and makes it crack when rolled. The sponge is done when it is pale gold, springs back when touched and has just started to pull from the edges of the tin.

The last trick is to roll it warm. Turned out onto sugar-dusted paper and rolled up while still hot, the sponge 'learns' its curved shape as it cools. Unrolled later and filled, it re-rolls along the same lines without cracking. Let it cool flat and it sets flat, and forcing it into a spiral tears the surface.

iii. Ingredients

Makes 8 servings · scroll the side panel to adjust

• 5 eggs, at room temperature
• 125 g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp honey or glucose syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100 g plain flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 2 tbsp icing sugar, for rolling
• 400 g thick dulce de leche (repostero) or manjar blanco
• 200 ml double cream, optional
• 200 g strawberries, sliced, optional
• 2 tbsp icing sugar, to finish

Use dulce de leche repostero, the thick pastry-grade kind sold in Argentina; ordinary spoonable dulce de leche is softer and squeezes out of the roll. If yours is loose, chill it first or beat in a little icing sugar. In Peru, manjar blanco is the standard filling. Room-temperature eggs whip to far greater volume than cold ones. The honey or glucose keeps the sponge flexible; leave it out and the roll is slightly more prone to cracking. Some recipes replace a little flour with cornflour for a finer crumb. You need a large, shallow tin, about 38 × 28 cm.

iv. Method

1. Heat the oven to 200 °C (400 °F), or 180 °C fan. Line a 38 × 28 cm Swiss roll tin or baking tray with baking paper and grease the paper lightly.
2. Whisk the eggs, sugar, honey and vanilla with an electric mixer on high for 8–10 minutes, until pale, very thick and tripled in volume. The foam should hold a ribbon on its surface for several seconds.
3. Sift the flour and salt over the foam in three additions, folding gently with a large spatula after each, cutting down through the middle and turning the bowl, until no dry flour remains. Do not stir.
4. Pour into the tin and spread evenly into the corners with an offset spatula, working quickly and lightly. Bake for 7–9 minutes until pale golden, springy to the touch and just pulling from the edges.
5. Dust a sheet of baking paper with icing sugar. Turn the hot sponge out onto it, peel off the lining paper, and immediately roll it up from a short side with the sugared paper inside. Leave to cool rolled, about 30 minutes.
6. Whip the cream, if using, to soft peaks. Unroll the sponge gently. Spread the dulce de leche evenly, leaving a 2 cm border at the far end, then spread over the cream and scatter the strawberries.
7. Re-roll firmly using the paper to guide it, finishing seam-side down. Wrap tightly in the paper or cling film and chill for at least 2 hours to set.
8. Trim the ends, dust with icing sugar and cut into 2–3 cm slices with a serrated knife.

v. Tips & common mistakes

• Whisk longer than seems necessary. All the lift comes from the egg foam. Under-whisked eggs give a flat, rubbery sheet that tears.
• Fold, never beat, in the flour. Vigorous mixing knocks out the air you spent ten minutes building. Fold in thirds and stop the moment it is smooth.
• Watch the oven closely. The difference between flexible and cracked is a minute or two. Pull the sponge as soon as it springs back.
• Roll while hot. Rolling the warm sponge sets its curve; a cooled flat sheet will crack when you try to roll it later.
• Use thick dulce de leche. Runny filling soaks the sponge and oozes from the ends. Pastry-grade (repostero) dulce de leche holds its line.
• Leave a bare border. As you roll, the filling is pushed forward; a clean strip at the far edge stops it squeezing out of the seam.

vi. Variations

Pionono de dulce de leche y frutillas (with strawberries and cream) is the Argentine party classic. Peruvian pionono is filled only with manjar blanco and buried under icing sugar. Chocolate pionono replaces 20 g of flour with cocoa and is often filled with chocolate ganache or dulce de leche and covered in chocolate. Pionono salado — the savoury version, filled with ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce, hard-boiled egg and mayonnaise — is a fixture of Argentine birthdays. The Granada pionono is the small, syrup-soaked Spanish original with its toasted-cream cap.

Rolled sponges are a global family: compare the Japanese matcha roll cake, the French Christmas bûche de Noël and the British Swiss roll. Argentina's other dulce de leche classics include the icebox chocotorta, and Uruguay's chajá layers sponge with meringue, cream and peaches.

vii. Serving & storage

Pionono is served cold, in slices that show off the spiral, as an afternoon merienda cake with coffee or mate, at birthdays, and as a dessert at family gatherings. In Peru it is sold by the slice in bakeries and eaten at any time of day.

Keep it wrapped in the fridge: a dulce de leche-only roll keeps for 4 days, one with cream and fresh fruit for 2. Unfilled sponge, rolled in its paper and wrapped, keeps for a day at room temperature or can be frozen flat between sheets of baking paper for a month. The filled roll (without fresh fruit) also freezes well for up to a month; slice while semi-frozen for very neat spirals.

ix. More from Latin American

• Dulce de Leche — slow-cooked milk caramel
• Chocotorta — Argentine biscuit icebox cake
• Manjar Blanco — Peruvian milk caramel
• Chajá — Uruguayan meringue and peach cake
• Matcha Roll Cake — Japanese green tea roll
• Bûche de Noël — French Christmas log