Eleven years ago, La Rifa Chocolatería in Mexico City introduced a dizzyingly dark, dense chocolate and cream tamal to its menu. Run through with the sultry flavors of caramel, butterscotch and molasses, the dish would quickly become one of its most popular to date.

Of its carefully collected local ingredients (blue corn masa from Cal y Maíz, nata from Lácteos la Ordeña and Mexican-grown cacao toasted and ground in-house), the tamal’s most remarkable element may be piloncillo, an unrefined whole-cane sugar.

“The caramel flavors in the piloncillo balance the acidity of our chocolates,” said Mónica Lozano, a founding partner of La Rifa, which gets its piloncillo from sustainable sugar cane farms in the eastern part of Mexico.

You can taste the grassy honeysuckle and anise flavors of the sugar cane in the piloncillo because it’s made by hand without industrial processing, she said, adding that the chocolatería prefers it to regular sugar.

Known as chancaca in Chile, Bolivia and Peru, and panela in Guatemala and Colombia, piloncillo (in Mexico) is made by crushing and extracting the juice from sugar cane. (A similar product, jaggery, is found in South Asia, Central America, Brazil and Africa.) The crushed cane and fibers are dried and fuel the fire used to boil the juice, evaporate the water and caramelize the sugars. The hot syrup, similar to molasses, is poured into wooden cone-shaped molds, cooled until hard, then sold in stores and markets.

It’s used in desserts like puerquitos, soft, pig-shaped cookies popular in Mexico and not unlike gingerbread. Capirotada, a fruit-filled bread pudding eaten during Lent and Easter, and café de olla, a spiced coffee, are both sweetened with piloncillo. It also adds depth and complexity to savory dishes, like moles and guisos (stews), giving them smoky, coffee and rummy flavors.

The easiest way to use piloncillo is to make a simple syrup and flavor it with citrus zest, warming spices or even chiles, then pour it over buñelos, pancakes or roasted sweet potatoes. You can also mix it into coffee or hot chocolate, and use it in recipes that call for molasses, like barbecue sauces, cakes and pies.

But to experience piloncillo’s recipe-changing power in your own cooking, you’re going to have to box-grate it into soft, pillowy piles. Yes, it’s a little bit of a workout, but it’s completely worth it. (Some larger pieces of that caramelized sugar will fall through the grater holes, and that’s OK. They’ll wind up as golden toffee-like nuggets in your baked goods.)

In cookies — like in this piloncillo chocolate chip cookie — you get all the flavor of browned butter without the work, since the intense sugar cane mimics its flavor. And, if you are a dark chocolate lover, you can use a much more intensely flavored chocolate because the piloncillo will mellow and balance its assertiveness.

Piloncillo has a very long shelf life and can be stored in a resealable plastic bag in your pantry for months. Because you’ll be shaving rock-hard sugar into a fine dust, the large holes of your grater are going to dull after several uses and will make grating harder cheeses like Parmesan more of a chore. You may want to consider buying a cheap box grater and designating it just for piloncillo. Save the fancy one for your cheese.

Piloncillo Chocolate Chip Cookies

By Rick A. Martínez

Piloncillo, unrefined whole-cane sugar, is the key ingredient of these richly nuanced cookies. Known as piloncillo in Mexico; chancaca in Chile, Bolivia and Peru; or panela in other Latin American countries, it is commonly used in both sweet and savory dishes and is made by crushing, extracting and boiling down the juice from sugar cane to caramelize the sugars. It adds notes of caramel, butterscotch and molasses to everything from cakes to barbecue sauce. In this cookie, the grated piloncillo complements the bittersweet chocolate and adds the nutty flavor of the toasted milk solids in browned butter, but without any of the work. It is a bit of a chore to grate, but the flavor it adds is well worth it.

Yield: About 17 cookies

Total time: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS

6 ounces/170 grams piloncillo
1/3 cup/67 grams granulated sugar
1/2 cup/113 grams unsalted butter (1 stick), melted
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 1/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1 large egg
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract or vanilla paste
1 2/3 cups/211 grams all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 heaping cup/170 grams bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks (preferably 72% cacao or higher)
Flaky sea salt or kosher salt

DIRECTIONS

With racks in the upper and lower thirds, heat oven to 350 degrees. Grate piloncillo using the large holes of a box grater. The grated piloncillo won’t look or feel like dark brown sugar; it will more closely resemble grated hard cheese and will have crumbly, irregular shapes with some larger split pea-size pieces. (The larger pieces will taste like and have the texture of broken bits of toffee inside the baked cookie.)
Whisk grated piloncillo, granulated sugar, butter and kosher salt in a large bowl until evenly mixed. Vigorously whisk in egg and vanilla until mixture lightens in color and becomes almost ribbony but with undissolved pieces of piloncillo, about 1 minute. This step is very important and will give your cookie a shiny top, like a brownie, that will crisp as it bakes.
Add flour and baking soda and, using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, mix until dough comes together and no floury bits remain, about 30 seconds. Stir in chocolate until evenly distributed. Dough will be soft and may be warmer than room temperature. Refrigerate for 30 minutes (or up to 5 days; see Tip) to enhance flavor and allow the dough to firm up.
Portion out balls of dough (about 2 generous tablespoons each) and space about 2 inches apart on 2 parchment-lined baking sheets. (You can also form dough into table tennis-size balls with your hands.) Do not flatten; cookies will spread as they bake. Sprinkle each ball with flaky or kosher salt.
Bake cookies, 2 sheets at a time, switching the pans halfway through, until edges are brown and firm but centers are still soft, 16 to 18 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.

Tips: Cookie dough can be made up to 5 days ahead; store in an airtight container and chill. Or portion into balls, cover with plastic and freeze up to 3 months. Let dough come to room temperature before baking.

This article originally appeare in the New York Times.

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By Jennifer Peltz and Lindsay Whitehurst, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis, but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use.

The proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications?

WHAT HAS ACTUALLY CHANGED? WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Technically, nothing yet. The proposal must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then undergo a public-comment period and review from an administrative judge, a potentially lengthy process.

Still, the switch is considered “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics, told The Associated Press when the federal Health and Human Services Department recommended the change.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

Budtender Rey Cruz weighs cannabis for a customer at the Marijuana Paradise on Friday, April 19, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

IF MARIJUANA GETS RECLASSIFIED, WOULD IT LEGALIZE RECREATIONAL CANNABIS NATIONWIDE?

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They’re subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission.

No changes are expected to the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states or the legal recreational cannabis markets in 23 states, but it’s unlikely they would meet the federal production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

There haven’t been many federal prosecutions for simply possessing marijuana in recent years, even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, but the reclassification wouldn’t have an immediate impact on people already in the criminal justice system.

“Put simple, this move from Schedule I to Schedule III is not getting people out of jail,” said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and marijuana business taxes.

WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN FOR RESEARCH?

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it’s been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study, though the reclassification wouldn’t immediately reverse all barriers to study, Culver said.

WHAT ABOUT TAXES (AND BANKING)?

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can’t deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn’t apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut cannabis companies’ taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York.

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, an executive at medical and recreational cannabis giant Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

It could also mean more cannabis promotion and advertising if those costs could be deducted, according to Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Center.

Rescheduling wouldn’t directly affect another marijuana business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug’s legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act. It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

ARE THERE CRITICS? WHAT DO THEY SAY?

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep the focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn’t include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they’re regulated, but that’s not the same).

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Minority Cannabis Business Association President Kaliko Castille said rescheduling just “re-brands prohibition,” rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.

Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

CHICAGO — It seems as if there’s been a new hero every night of the Twins’ lengthy winning streak — a sign that they’re getting contributions from up and down the roster. But on Tuesday, they went back to a formula that worked the night before: Byron Buxton gets on, Max Kepler brings him home.

For the second night in a row, Kepler drove in Buxton in the ninth inning — this time with a sacrifice fly — to lift Minnesota to victory. The 6-5 win over the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field was the Twins’ ninth straight, the first time the club has accomplished that feat since 2008.

“I feel like if we’re in a situation where we need just solid contact of some kind, put the bat on the ball, do something, just something happen — he’s just making things happen out there,” manager Rocco Baldelli said of Kepler.

Kepler returned from the injured list on April 22, the day the winning streak began. He was just 1 for 20 on the season at the time of his return. But he drove in three runs that night and hasn’t stopped hitting since.

The Twins’ (16-13) right fielder also stole a base in the sixth, drawing a throw to second base that allowed catcher Ryan Jeffers to steal home uncontested, a run which made the score 4-3 at the time.

Kepler, along with Carlos Correa and Jhoan Duran, both of whom came off the injured list this week in Chicago, all played big roles in Minnesota’s win on Tuesday.

In just his second game back from an intercostal strain, Correa made his impact felt, both with his bat and his glove.

The Twins’ star shortstop tied the game in the eighth with a two-out single on the first pitch of his at-bat off White Sox (6-24) reliever Jordan Leasure. Correa then scored what was the go-ahead run at the time.

“When you have that type of injury, it’s really hard to let go, to fully let go on your swing,” Correa said. “In that at-bat, I just said just ‘Swing hard, (expletive) it.’ You know what I mean? I just let my body flow, I loaded early and I just tried to swing as hard as I could and good things happen.”

He also saved a run earlier in the game, cutting down his good friend and old teammate Martín Maldonado trying to score from first in the third. Correa received a throw from center fielder Willi Castro and showed off his arm on his throw to Jeffers, who made an acrobatic tag to complete the play.

“I was surprised Maldy was trying to go from first to home. He never did it when I was playing with him. I don’t know why he’s doing it now that he’s (37),” Correa said of his friend with a smile.

A run scored that inning, though starter Simeon Woods Richardson was able to minimize the damage against him despite giving up four hits.

Woods Richardson would give up one more run, which was unearned, before his departure after he ran into trouble again in the fourth.

“You’re going to have really good outings, you’re going to have crappy outings and you’re going to have outings that you work through,” Woods Richardson said. “It’s kind of what I had to do today. Luckily, the offense is amazing right now.”

That offense rallied back both after Kody Funderburk allowed a two-run home run in the fifth and again after Cole Sands allowed a game-tying home-run in the eighth. Minnesota reliever Griffin Jax was unavailable after his recent usage and the Twins were trying to stay away from Brock Stewart, as well.

And while Baldelli’s plan wasn’t to use Duran in a save situation his first game back, Minnesota’s now-healthy closer delivered, as usual, sealing the team’s ninth-straight win.

His reward?

As the team’s infielders huddled together to pose for a fake photo as part of a new post-game celebration, Duran had to act as the photographer.

“Because he only got three outs, so he doesn’t deserve to be in the picture with the guys that played nine innings,” Correa joked.

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