Each country has typical dishes that are prepared throughout the year. Between sweet or salty recipes, each dish that is prepared represents a special time. In Venezuela, it is typical in the month of December, to prepare theTraditional Sweet of Papaya . The papaya is a fruit that many people do not like, perhaps because they have tasted it very mature and when this mature one can be very sweet or they have eaten the fruit lacking process of maturation and can be bitter.

The Traditional Sweet of Papaya is a soft dessert and pleasant to the palate. It is charged with species like cinnamon, fig leaves, cloves and others, which give it aroma and much flavor. The typical sweets of Venezuela are charged of a lot of aroma and flavor product of the sweet species. Without these spices, typical sweets would not be the same.

It is not important if you do not like papaya, when you try this sweet, I am sure that you will like it. As green papaya is used, it does not have much flavor and when you put the spices, they will be absorbed by the papaya and you will obtain an exquisite sweet. There are many ways to prepare this typical sweet of my country, today I want to present one of the ways to prepare it that I hope you can do at home.

• 3 Kg of green papaya
• 1Kg of sugar
• 1 panela of papelón or 500gr of brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• Water in necessary quantity
• Sweet cloves
• Fig leaves
• cinnamon and sweet species of preference.

• We will start by removing all the papaya skin, remove the seeds and cut into thin slices.
• In a bowl, put the papaya to soak overnight.
• 15min before starting to prepare the sweet, add 2 spoonfuls of bicarbonate.

• After 15 minutes, throw away the water and wash well. Don't let the papaya rest any longer, otherwise it will become hard and bitter.
• In a pot, add the papaya and cover it with water. Add the spices and let it cook for 30-40 minutes until the water is reduced by half.

• Add the sugar together with the brown sugar and let it cook until a light syrup is formed.

• Turn off the fire and let it cool down completely. You can pack it in jars and eat it at any time of the year.

This sweet is very tasty if eaten cold and has rested at least 24 hours in covered containers so that the flavors have concentrated. Since the papaya is very soft, the slices will break, although there are other methods to keep their shape. One of them is to put the slices in the sun for at least two days. This will make them soft inside and crunchy outside. I hope you dare to prepare this recipe.

_{All pictures were taken by me, with a Xiaomi Redmi 7 phone, without any edition. They were only compressed to facilitate the visualization of the content.}