Oficina do Doce

Ovos Moles de Aveiro trace back to the 16th-century Convent of Jesus in Aveiro, where nuns used large quantities of egg whites in domestic tasks such as starching and ironing habits, leaving them with surplus egg yolks. Rather than waste the yolks, the convent developed a way to use them: mixing yolk with a sugar syrup made from imported Madeira sugar, and encasing the resulting sweet paste inside thin wafer shells shaped like small shellfish and sea creatures, a nod to Aveiro's lagoon and coastal setting. The recipe and technique were passed down through the convent and, later, secular producers, following the same conventual method for generations. Ovos Moles de Aveiro became the first Portuguese convent-origin sweet to receive Protected Geographical Indication status from the European Union, a designation that legally ties the name to the Aveiro region and to production following the traditional recipe — protecting it from being made elsewhere under the same name. Oficina do Doce, located in Aveiro's Galeria Rossio, operates as a hands-on interpretation center for this history rather than only a point of sale: its Ovos Moles workshop runs roughly 30 minutes, walking participants through the sweet's convent origins before letting them take part in filling and cutting the wafer shells themselves, finishing with a tasting of the finished ovos moles and other conventual sweets from the wider Aveiro region.