From Argentina With Love

Celebrating Día del Niño--Dulce de Leche Donuts

The second Sunday in August is a special day in Argentina--it's Día del Niño, or Children's Day.  (This year it was postponed for elections, and was on Sunday the 21st.)

Día del Niño is a day celebrating the fleeting and wonder-filled years of childhood.  I suppose adults on this day may reflect on their own fond memories of youth, but really the day is to celebrate the children in our lives--our own or even someone else's.  On this day of honoring children, kids get a small gift and are told 'Feliz Día!'--they feel important, special and loved just for being themselves!

Esteban woke up to balloons on his chair at breakfast, a little metal lunch box from the Cars 2 movie with a t-shirt inside, and these dulce de leche-filled donuts to eat.  A special boy on this special day deserves a treat for breakfast, don't you think?  (Although in all truth, Papí ate many more of these donuts than Esteban did!)  

These would be wonderful for breakfast not only Día del Niño, but on any day when a little celebration is in order--the first day of school, or a birthday, or to celebrate any kind of pint-sized accomplishment--the winning goal, memorizing that challenging piano piece, or making the grade.  

I adapted the recipe from one for filled donuts I found on my friend Jen's blog, Use Real Butter. Since we live near each other at high altitude I knew this recipe would be a good one for making at a mile high, and it worked out perfectly--thanks Jen!  They were delicious! 

The rest of the day was spent playing--something we all need to slow down and do--young or old.  Even if for a day, we got to celebrate our son and be kids again, ourselves.

 
Dulce de Leche-Filled Donuts

Donas Rellenas de  Dulce de Leche (Rosquillas Rellenas de Dulce de Leche)

 These donuts are wonderful served with coffee for grownups or warm milk for little ones.  They are best when fresh, but will last a day or so in an air-tight container--at least long enought to enjoy as a midnight snack!  They can also be filled with jelly, custard or frosting.

makes a baker's dozen

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/8 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit)

3/4 cup warm milk (scalded and then cooled) 

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

heaping 1/4 cup shortening 

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

cooking spray (or butter or vegetable oil, for greasing bowl)

vegetable oil (about 2 cups, for frying)

1 cup dulce de leche

confectioner's sugar, for dusting

 

In a small saucepan, heat the milk just until the boiling point and then remove from heat.  Let the milk cool to lukewarm. Rinse the metal bowl of your stand mixer with warm water (so that when you add in the warm water for the recipe, it doesn't cool the water down).  Add the 1/8 cup warm water to the mixer bowl and dissolve the yeast into the warm water.  Add in the milk, sugar, salt, egg, shortening and 1 cup of the  flour, and then beat on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go, for about 2 minutes. Stir in the remaining flour.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until a smooth dough forms, about two minutes.  Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, and let rise for about an hour, covered, in a warm place, until the dough has doubled in size.

Flour 2 baking sheets.  (Rub with butter or spray with cooking spray, dust with flour and discard the extra flour.) Turn the risen dough out onto a floured surface and roll it out to 1/2 inch thickness. Using a round cookie cutter or the rim of a sturdy juice glass, cut the dough.  Place the cut dough onto the cookie sheets, and repeat the process with the remaining dough.  Let the donuts rise on the floured cookie sheets, covered, until doubled in size, about a half hour or so.

Heat the oil in a fryer, dutch oven or frying pan (if using a frying pan, use about 3/4 cup to start) and prepare a plate lined with paper towels.  Heat the oil to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Slide the donuts a few at a time (I did batches of 4) into the hot oil, and fry until golden on one side (about one minute) before turning over with a spatula.  Fry for about one minute more, and then carefully remove the donuts to the plate to drain.

Once the donuts are fried and cooled, fill a pastry bag with a wider tip with dulce de leche.  Make a small hole in each donut with a sharp, narrow knife, and then use the knife to make a cavity inside the donut to fill with dulce de leche.  Fill the cavity with the dulce de leche, and then dust with confectioner's sugar before serving.  

Alfajores Mendocinos--Mendoza Style Alfajores

I've eaten my fair share of alfajores, I'll confess that now. Two buttery cookies sandwiched with gooey dulce de leche, then rolled in coconut along the edges, dipped in a bath of white or dark chocolate, or simply dusted in a blanket confectioner's sugar--who among us can resist such a sweet?

But I thought all alfajores were pretty much the same--with more or less the aforementioned combination. That is, until Katie at Seashells and Sunflowers invited a group of bloggers (myself included) to participate in a round up of Regional Alfajores.

As it turns out, every region has its own twist on the traditional alfajor--there are Alfajores Marplatenses from the coastal Buenos Aires province and the area around Mar del Plata--represented by Katie, who followed her sweetheart from the U.S. to Necochea. Aledys, who followed her sweetheart to the Netherlands and writes her blog, From Argentina to the Netherlands, For Love! writes about Alfajores Cordobeses, hailing from her home province of Cordoba. Meag at A Domestic Disturbance is writing about the alfajor from the province of Santa Fe, Alfajores Santafesinos, while Ana from Ana Travels writes about Alfajores de Maicena, and Paula from Bee My Chef (she's also a contributor at Buenos Aires Foodies) made Alfajores Salteños from the province of Salta. Please visit my fellow contributor's blogs to see their delicious riffs on the regional alfajor!

As for the Alfajor Mendocino, in digging around I found a number of unique takes on 'traditional' alfajores. Some were made in a rectangular shape, filled with strawberry jam, some with arrope, a honey syrup, and some dipped in white chocolate--very different from the usual idea of alfajores.

The most typical alfajor from the province of Mendoza is infused with just a hint of anise, filled with sticky dulce de leche, and coated with a sugary meringue called baño blanco. I love the adaptations of this cookie whose origins go as far back as the Moorish occupation of Spain, and I hope you enjoy this version, as well as the regional alfajores of my fellow bloggers!

Alfajores Mendocinos

Mendoza-Style Alfajores

This recipe makes about 2 dozen small (2-inch) or 1 dozen large (3-inch) alfajores. The dough can easily be doubled, and the baño blanco makes enough to cover 4 dozen small alfajores. I made these bite-sized alfajores using the rim of an egg cup, you can use a juice glass or any size round cookie cutter. The dough freezes well for up to 2 months, and the prepared alfajores can be stored in an air-tight container for about a week.

For the cookies:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

a pinch of salt

3 eggs

3 eggs, separated (reserve 2 of the whites for making the baño blanco)

2 tablespoons anisette (anise liqueur)

2 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup dulce de leche (homemade or storebought)

cooking spray or additional butter for cookie sheets

For the baño blanco:

1/2 cup water

2 cups sugar

2 eggs, whites only

In a medium mixing bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, yolks, butter, anisette and sugar. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry, and stir until a uniform dough has been made. Form the dough into a ball (it will be sticky), wrap in saran wrap, and refrigerate for at least a half hour or up to overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Using cooking spray or butter, grease a cookie sheet. Generously flour a countertop or work surface and roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick. If the dough is sticking to the counter, remove the dough, put down more flour, and roll out the dough again.

Using a round cutter, (egg cup or juice glass also work) cut the cookie rounds out of the dough and put them on the baking sheet. Ball up the remaining dough and repeat the rolling and cutting process until the dough has been used up. If you fill a cookie sheet and put it in to bake and have dough leftover, replace the dough into the refrigerator until you roll it out and bake it. (This keeps the dough from rising too much). Put the cookies in the oven and bake for 10 minutes (maybe 12 minutes if you are making the larger sized cookies.) They should not brown on the bottom or edges, but they should be dry on top when you tap them. Remove to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Fill a pastry bag with the dulce de leche (or just smear about a teaspoon or more onto a cookie) and pipe a heaping teaspoon of dulce de leche onto one cookie. Place another cookie on top, making sandwiching the two cookies with the dulce de leche in between.

To make the baño blanco, combine the sugar and the water in a small sauce pan and heat over medium-high heat until it reaches a boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar in the water, and continue to boil until the sugar syrup thickens slightly, about ten minutes. When spooned, it should be thick enough to create a 'thread' of syrup drizzling back into the pan, but not thick enough to be caramelized.

Meanwhile, beat the reserved egg whites with a beater on medium high speed until they stiffen slightly and are white and fluffy, about three to five minutes. When the sugar syrup is to the right consistency, slowly drizzle it into the bowl with the egg whites, beating continuously. You will have a glossy creamy meringue. It shouldn't be stiff, rather, able to be painted on to the alfajores. Using a pastry brush, paint the outside of the alfajores with the meringue. Set on a cookie sheet or work surface lined with wax paper and let dry for several hours.or overnight. The baño blanco will eventually be a dry crust on the outside of the alfajores.

Pionono de Dulce de Leche--Caramel Jelly Roll

You know if you're a parent that moment when your toddler is quiet, and you allow yourself a momentary  mental sigh of relief.  And then, you think, wait--it's too quiet, and discover them in the bathroom, an entire roll of toilet paper unraveled around them, or the in the kitchen with the bubbles from the dish soap overflowing all over the kitchen floor, or all of your makeup taken out and spread all over the place.  (Not that this has happened to me,  ummm, I'm just saying!)

Alfajores de Maicena--Dulce de Leche Cornstarch Shortbread Cookies

Today I want to take you to Mendoza's Peotonal--the cafe-lined pedestrian mall near the Plaza Independencia; to sample the Alfajores at Havanna.  Havanna is Argentina's oldest and best-known producer of alfajores, the shortbread-like sandwich cookie filled with gooey, sweet dulce de leche.  At the Havanna cafe, visitors spend long afternoon hours sipping cortitos con leche with a seltzer on the side, smoking, laughing, talking politics--and eating the company's famed cookies.  The cafe tables are lined up in rows on the wide sidewalk, shaded by trees and blooming red umbrellas that look like poppies.  Like a trip to the glamorous era of Fellini films, guests sit in director chairs with 'HAVANNA' written across the canvas back.

Milhojas de Dulce de Leche--Dulce de Leche Napoleons

 

If you had a dream pantry, what would be in it?  Would you have a few staples in a drawer, or maybe an infinite walk-in closet full of every food product imaginable?  The Perfect Pantry, hosted by the lovely Lydia, is a blog about all the items that would be in that ultimate pantry.  Lydia chooses a product, writes an amazing history of it (I always learn something!) and then makes a recipe with it.  On Saturdays, she does OPP (that's Other People's Pantries, BTW) and gives us a peek into how other folks stock their larders.