These puffy meringue desserts served inside ice cream cones are sold on the street in Ecuador—outside schools, in main plazas, and at open markets. Espumilla, meaning “little foam,” may look like ice cream or whipped cream in a cone, but it’s actually a very sweet meringue cream dessert, with a similar texture to lemon meringue pie, except mixed with tangy guava pulp instead of citrus juice. Torta de Mil Hojas: ChileThe mil hojas is popular throughout South America, but particularly in Chile. Also known as the “Thousand Layer” or “Thousand Sheets,” this cake might not literally have one thousand layers, but it’s still a dessert of gargantuan proportions. Manjar is spread on sheets of wafer-thin puff pastry dough to create a cake that’s generally 10-15 layers high, and then the entire concoction is covered like frosting for the ultimate manjar overload with crunch, flaky pastry bits in each bite. Every family makes a slightly different version: some decorate the cake with nuts, others even call for Chilean pisco to be applied to each layer.
