Conventi de San Leandro, Seville

First up today was a visit to Convento de San Leandro to buy confectionery from nuns. The nuns sell their homemade sweets here to help them maintain their maintenance and live in the monasteries with the money collected. Many monasteries are forced to close because they cannot pick up the money to continue.
Fifty years ago, Seville had 41 monasteries, of which only fifteen are left. Many have been abandoned or forced into offices, museums or evenementenruimtes. By buying these homemade sweets from the nuns, we get the chance to support them. The recipes they use have been passed on for hundreds of years and are really typical authentic Spanish desserts.

At this convent we enter a small room with a lazy susan installed in the wall. There is a price list beside the lazy susan with the amounts listed for the quantities available. As there is only one sweet available you just have to decide how much you want and put the exact amount of money on the lazy susan. You then ring the buzzer and turn the lazy susan so the money disappears behind the wall. You never see the nuns as they avoid contact with the public and after a few minutes the turntable will turn again and we are presented with a lovely wrapped box of sweets.

The sweets they make at this convent are called yemas de San Leand, yolks of San Leandro, and consist of egg yolks baked with sugar. They are a traditional sweet made by the cloistered nuns from a very old recipe.

They have great fame in the city and have been praised for their delicate flavor and recognized outside the local sphere, they are one of the products described in the book 1000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (a thousand dishes to eat before you die). We saved these until we got home to try them. They have a very unique texture and flavour and even with Brad loving his lollies we didn’t eat them all. they must be for those with an elevated pallet.Read more