This traditional Mexican dish is attached to many fond memories of dinner time with my cousins.  My tia would start her day early making the meat, charring her chiles, chopping onions and tomatoes, and crumbling the cheese.  That was always a sure sign that we were going to have sopes for dinner.  Us kids would run outside all day long and as the day would come to a close we tiredly shuffled inside and formed a line in the bathroom to wash the days’ grime off our hands.  Some of my cousins would start a game of Monopoly, and others would opt for TV.  I always made my way into the kitchen where I would find my tia measuring out her Maseca and mixing it with all the ingredients needed to make sopes.  I stood close by to see if she would let me roll the corn based dough between my hands to form a small ball then pat them into thick fist sized disks, most of the time she would let me.  Then after they had their turn on the comal she would take each disk and pinch the edges to form a mini wall that would keep the ingredients from falling over board, forming the perfect sope.  She would then fill a frying pan with oil and let the oil get piping hot and drop each disk in just until it was perfectly fried on the outside. Then all the fried sopes would sit on a paper lined tray to drain and wait for the rest to be made.  One by one they would be topped with beans and cheese, some with meat and some with chicken.  Everyone had a different request, heck one of my little cousins just wanted Ovaltine on his (yucky).  Then all the cousins would join at the table, some of us sharing chairs and other squishing together to sit on a bench.  None the less we were together, happily eating our sopes as one big family with lots of hungry mouths.

Ingredients for Sopes:

• 4 – cups Maseca
• 1/2- teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 – cups warm water
• vegetable oil

Disclosure: This post is a collaboration with Latina Bloggers Connect and Maseca. All opinions are 100% my own.