06/04/2020
We are in the beginning of April, 2020, a completely unusual moment for the whole world. Yes, humanity has not experienced anything this big for a long time. THE – WHOLE – WORLD.
I don’t know how you are feeling right now, but I feel like I am living something historical that will be remembered and talked about a lot in the future. And after the “panic” when I first heard it was coming, I’m finally getting used to the situation and feeling thankful for being able to stay at home in quarantine. It’s not easy for anyone, but everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? 🙂
My spiritual mentor taught me a daily exercise: thinking about something good that this moment brought. Today’s good thing for me is to be able to make a cup of coffee (which I’m addicted to) and sit on the floor to write the first post of my blog (YAS!).
We have been planning this since the beginning of the year (when we had no idea that all of this was going to happen), but today, on this sunny Sunday, this idea takes shape.
Let’s start this blog with a recipe that I love, the dulce de leche alfajor. I made this recipe last year on a live and received many kind thank you feedbacks. And I wanted to bring it up again because it’s perfect for this moment. It’s wonderful to make it at home (especially with kids, they are good helpers) and also for delivery sales.
Dulce de leche Alfajors
Ingredients:
– 110g unsalted butter
– 150g granulated sugar
– 2 egg yolks
– 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract or essence
– 150g corn starch
– 140g cake flour
– 5g baking powder
– 400g of dulce de leche in firm consistency (you can use the condensed milk cooked in the pressure cooker)
– Icing sugar for dusting
Preparation method:
The first thing to do is to take the butter out of the fridge. It needs to be at room temperature to reach that beautiful paste consistency, which is when it has structure but is still able to embrace and unite with the other ingredients.
Meanwhile, you can walk in your kitchen collecting other ingredients, baking pan, utensils, etc.
Place the butter in the stand mixer bowl and whip until smooth. If the butter has hard and cooler parts, it will all be even after this step.
Now, it’s time to put the sugar and whip just enough to incorporate, for even less than one minute. However, the yolks do need to be whipped more.Whip them well, one by one, and add the vanilla. Meanwhile, you can take the time to sift the flour, starch and baking powder together.
Now it’s time to say goodbye to the stand mixer: let’s incorporate and add the dry ingredients. Add them in one or two parts and mix with a spatula, avoiding many movements, as much as possible. If you overmix it in this step, gluten will develop (because of the movement and heat) and you will have an elastic dough instead of a very soft cookie.
Okay, now just cover the dough and let it rest for at least 15 minutes in the fridge.
Preheat the oven at 180⁰C if you are using a conventional oven and 160⁰C for fan ovens. These 15 minutes of rest plus the time you shape the alfajors is plenty of time for preheating 🙂
Work the dough in small sections: cut it in half or in 4 parts and work one at a time.
Line the bench with a plastic sheet and place the dough on top. Cover with another plastic sheet and start opening with the rolling pin. Using the plastic sheets prevents us from adding extra flour to the bench and rolling pin, and ending up drying the dough.
Open the dough until it is half a centimeter, very thin. With a 5cm round cutter, or any cup or glass you have in your kitchen, cut circles in the dough. Remember that the closer you cut to each other, more circles will be done in each rolling. In addition to saving time, you avoid too much handling (remember the gluten problem? That’s it).
Place the discs carefully on a rectangular baking sheet lined with parchment paper, leaving a space between them. Bake them until the base is slightly golden. In my oven, it was ready in 6 minutes, but macarons have taught me, over the years, that each oven is different, so I suggest you to follow it up.
While the cookies cool, place a 1cm round tip in a pastry bag. Put the dulce de leche in and let’s fill them up.
Pipe the dulce de leche on the base of one of the cookies, leaving a space on the borders. With another cookie, gently press the filling. It is important to leave the filling always contained within the borders of the cookies, so you don’t touch it when handling, avoiding a complete mess.
If you do not have the pastry bag and tip, you can use a spoon to place the dulce de leche, no problem.
Finishing them all, dusting icing sugar with a very fine sieve.
This recipe yields about 16 filled alfajores.
I made this recipe in a live stream, back in 2019. If you want to watch me doing the process, click here
This was the best alfajor recipe I have ever made and I am happy to share it with you.
I’ll be even happier if you make it and tag me on instagram @nat.mendonca 🙂
Have a nice quarantine, from the bottom of my heart.