"Argentine by birth and Uruguayan by adoption, Irene Delponte trained as a film producer, but with the birth of her first son, she changed careers entirely. “Suddenly I started cooking and taking photos. This was when Instagram was used only on iPhones, and the community was much smaller,” she says. Delponte trained in pastry at the Cordon Bleu institute in Lima and began to make traditional sweets with her own flair, gaining fans online for her alfajor absolutely stuffed with dulce de leche and her version of a Snickers bar. More recently she’s experimented with pate of winter fruits and miso-infused salty caramel and dulce de leche. Her sweets are found in some bars and cafes in Montevideo, but she mainly sells them through social media and at food festivals. — MB" - Marcela Baruch