Small Fried Masa Cakes with Bean Filling

These savory little morsels — masa adroitly shaped around a pocket of bean filling — are one subspecies of the gorditas that you find all over the state. Shaping tapaditas without having them spring a leak can be difficult. Every cook has a different stratagem. I’ve mastered a method that gives good results, though it’s not exactly the technique of the cook who gave me this excellent recipe, Carmen Martínez Barrales, at Casa Bonilla in the north central hill town of Coatepec.<