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Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking Sweet Empanadas
Hi Bold Bakers!
Being a professional baker, you know I have a real passion for bread and dough making.
And if you follow me on my social media, you'll know that I received a beautiful Alfa Pizza
wood burning oven all the way from Italy.
I'm really excited to take our bread making and baking in general to a whole new level
with this oven.
The first recipe we're going to make is Chocolate Empanadas.
So let's get baking!
An empanada is a stuffed pastry that is very popular in latin countries.
Generally however it is savory but today we are making a BIG & BOLD Chocolate and Caramel
version.
This recipe can also be made in a conventional oven but I'm going to use my new pizza oven
because it's great for baking and not just for bread making.
Also, it's summer in LA so why not cook outside.
We're going to start out my making a basic chocolate shortcrust pastry.
In a large bowl, we're going to sift our flour, cocoa powder, icing sugar, salt and cinnamon.
The reason I Iike to sift all these ingredients together is because when you're making pastry
I like to get it nice and fine and also I always find lumps in my cocoa powder so always
like to give it a good sift before I use it.
The next ingredient we're going to add in is cold cubed butter.
All you want to do is rub it into your flour until you kind of have a bread crumb texture.
Some big bits of butter and some small bits of butter.
If you want to use a fork to rub in your butter that's totally fine, go ahead.
I just like to get stuck in and be able to feel my dough.
What you want to do is not overmix it too much.
This is perfect, like I said, rough bread crumbs.
Once your butter is nicely rubbed in, we're going to add in our wet ingredients.
Now I'm going to add egg yolks, and instead of adding water or milk, which you can do,
I'm actually going to add in coffee.
Which is a really good tip I got from a blog.
Why not add that extra bit of flavor, in the coffee because it will work so well with the
chocolate, the caramel and all the other ingredients once its baked.
I'm going to mix these two in a separate bowl before adding them into the rest of the ingredients.
I like to use my hands to bring my dough together but feel free to use a spatula or a wooden
spoon.
With your hand, just bring all of the dough together.
It should only take a minute to bring all of your dough together with your hand and
end up with a clean bowl.
It's the sign of a good dough.
Wrap your dough in parchment or cling film and we're going to pop it in the fridge for
30 minutes to let it rest and get nice and chilled.
Once it's cold, it will be much easier to roll out.
And while it's in the fridge, we're going to get cracking on our filling.
We are filling our empanadas with beautiful Dulce de Leche.
Now if you haven't had this before, it's very similar to caramel.
And also quite a popular treat in Latin American countries that's why it will work really well
with the empanada.
Now I've actually made this before in a previous video and it's really easy.
In a pot of water, simmer a can of condensed milk for an hour and a half to two hours.
Then let it go totally cold and inside your can you will have a lovely caramel dulce de
leche.
It's been 30 minutes.
Our pastry is nice and rested so it's time to roll it out.
Generously flour your work surface.
And then we're simply going to roll out our pastry until it's a 1/4 inch thick.
Once your pastry is rolled out, we're going to take a large round cutter and cut all of
our circles.
The reason I added cinnamon into this pastry is because I wanted to give the dish a little
extra spice and warmth just like you would find in latin cooking.
I think it will work really well.
With your pastry scraps leftover, give them a quick knead together and then roll them
out to make more empanadas.
Just before we fill our empanadas, we're going to egg wash the outside of the pastry just
to give them a nice seal and make sure they don't open up while baking.
Next, take a spoonful of your dulce de leche and pop it on half of your pastry.
I'm always tempted to overfill pastry pockets but then when I do they explode in the oven
so definitely less is more with these guys.
To seal your empanada, fold over the pastry until it hits the other seal.
And then push out any air that might be inside.
Go around the rim and seal it with a fork.
And then a little finishing touch that you'll find on some empanadas is a curled rim.
And then with a fork, give a little pierce on top so you can let out steam while it's
cooking.
And there you have it, a beautiful little empanada.
I'm going to get the rest of them ready and then we're going to pop them into the oven.
One thing that I like to do, which is totally optional, is sprinkle a little bit of salt
on top of the dulce de leche just to enhance all of the flavors in this little treat.
Just before our empanadas go into the oven, we're going to give them a little bit of egg
wash because you want to get a lovely shiny golden color on the pastry.
Our empanadas are ready to be baked.
They're looking fantastic so we're going to pop them in the oven.
You want to bake your empanadas until they're lovely and golden brown.
It will take around 15-20 minutes and I bake mine at 375F/190C.
Our timer has gone off and I can smell chocolate in the air so I think our empanadas are ready.
These look fantastic!
Oh, they are lovely and golden brown.
I wish you guys could smell these because they smell so good.
So I'm definitely going to have to cut one of these open right now and just have a little
taste.
Look at that a nice lovely thick layer of pastry.
And gooey warm caramel coming out.
I'm really excited to try this guy.
For me this treat is perfect because the pastry is more rich then it is sweet and then when
you get to the caramel it all balances out perfectly.
It's just really delicious.
I really hope you enjoyed this video and let me know in the comments below what recipe
you'd like to see me make in my new oven.
Thank you so much for watching and subscribing.
And I'll see you back here every Thursday for more Bigger Bolder Baking.