Teclas – The Best Pastry, Ever!

As a child in the 1960’s my parents decided to take a vacation in Santander, in the north central part of Spain, right on the coast. 

It was the hometown of my aunt Crucita.  Her family had apartments in the city and her brother had an apartment that he rented out to us for our stay.

Santander, being on the coast, has typical foggy and cold and damp air.  It is the gate way to the northern coast.  From there you can drive to other coastal cities like Bilbao and San Sebastian to the east and to Gijon and Aviles to the west.  The coastal cities were mostly fishing communities with light industries, but all very historic. 

Santander was a large city, and not necessarily kid friendly.  So, in order to appease us and keep us content, every day my aunt and mother would take my sister and I for a walk-through various part of the city to see what was available.  When we got bored and started to complain, my aunt would stop at a pastry shop and ask the owner for a box of Teclas, which would be selected from the tray in the windowed counter and placed into a pink box.  The baker would then tie the box with a white string and finish it off with a bow. 

Inside that box, I discovered the best pastry I had ever had, the Tecla.  Let’s be frank, it was more than a sweet pastry, it was the treat of treats, taking a bored boy out of the world of the mundane into a dream world of sweetness!

Teclas from Santander, Spain

The Tecla is similar in structure to a Napoleon, with, what seemed like a million leaves of filo dough, stuffed with a not too sweet custard.  The Tecla was a bit thinner and longer than a Napoleon and a bit flakier.  I remember having to brush off all the filo crumbs off of my shirt every time I ate one. 

When I returned to Santander 50 years later, our driver took us to the very same pastry shop where we purchased our first Teclas back in 1969.  It was now run by the original owner’s grandson.  We entered and I asked the baker for a dozen Teclas so that my wife could taste what I remembered.  Much to my surprise, the baker told me that that recipe was lost when the shop burned down in a fire in the 1970’s.  The best he could do was a Napoleon, to which I said that it was his duty to recreate his grandfather’s Teclas and make them available for the public again.  It was to be his mission! 

And It will be my mission to return and verify that he took on the challenge, with the hope that others can taste what an original Tecla tastes like.