Pastry Profiles: Carrot Muffin, El Tesoro Cafe, Santa Fe NM

I've never known a muffin like this before.

I met this muffin at a place called El Tesoro, which is located in the Sanbusco Market Center in the Guadalupe District of Santa Fe. Per the Sanbusco Center website, "This treasure, as the name El Tesoro implies, has been serving food to Santa Feans for the past ten years.  Breakfast and lunch are served daily.  The menus are a beautiful blend of New Mexican, Central American and American entrees; it is a local’s favorite for fresh guacamole, great green chile, pupusas, salvadorean tamales, salads and salmon tacos.  The food is prepared fresh daily with items made to order."

Now, a New Mexican-Central American eatery wouldn't be the place I'd expect to find a top-tier muffin...or to have a muffin on the menu at all...but that's just what they have here.

It's a carrot zucchini muffin you see in the picture above, and while the taste is just fantastic--spicy, lightly sweet, very moist--what is really intriguing about this muffin is the texture.

It's soft and cakey on the inside, but has a firm yet silky-smooth crust on the exterior. It's almost like the exterior of a popover. It makes you want to keep eating just for another bite of that perfect texture. How on earth did they do it? I would love to know!

But mostly, I'd like to eat another, and soon!

El Tesoro, 500 Montezuma Avenue, at the Sanbusco Center; online here.