(upbeat music)
- So I'm going to show you a simple recipe
to make a simple pastry dough.
You can use this dough to make pies, galettes
but we're going to be making some pineapple empanadas.
And I'm going to walk you through every step
so that you can make this at home.
This dough is kind of a evolution of dough
that my grandma used to make and what my moms made.
Once you have a dough,
you can use it to make savory empanadas and sweet empanadas.
We're going to make sweet empanadas
but if you want to make a savory dough,
you can just omit the sugar and the cinnamon
and you can fill it like ground beef
or chicken tinga or cheese and chili.
So there's so many variations
but we're going to make a sweet dough
which has some cinnamon and sugar in it.
So this dough is super simple made with pantry staples.
We have all-purpose flour.
We have granulated sugar, some eggs, baking powder,
ground cinnamon, vegetable shortening, salt and some milk.
Super simple ingredients to get started
making our pastry dough.
So I'm going to be using a stand mixer
but if you don't have a stand mixer,
you can easily make this in a bowl,
literally just with your hands,
combine all your dry ingredients.
And then you're going to add in your liquid ingredients,
your milk and your eggs.
And then you can combine that with a bowl
but I don't want to get my hands dirty,
so I'm going to cheat and use a stand mixer.
Also, I'm using baking powder versus baking soda.
I know they're interchangeable
but with baking powder, really has that power to help
that dough get nice and tender and rise
not only before you bake it but during baking.
We're going to start with the dry ingredients.
We're going to start with the flour
and we need three cups of flour.
So let me scoop that out.
And with flour, you want to be sure to not pack your flour.
That's a big no-no when it comes to baking.
I never trust my husband to bake
because he always packs the flour
and it's not a pretty thing.
So just level it off, get your flour.
And we want three cups.
If you pack your flour, you are going to get more flour
than you need.
When it comes to brown sugar,
it'll usually say to pack that
because you want a full serving.
With flour, it's nice and light
that it'll fill exactly with what you need
versus packing it, you're just going to get more
than what you really need.
So we have three cups of flour.
And then just half a teaspoon of salt.
And with salt, even though this is a sweet empanada,
salt really adds and just emphasizes all of those flavors.
So don't be afraid that we're putting salt
in a sweet pastry dough.
Then some baking powder.
We're going to do two teaspoons of baking powder.
And what's nice is I love that this has like
your automatic little level on here.
Smart little invention that canister.
We're adding some ground cinnamon.
And then we're going to add two tablespoons of sugar.
If you want to use the same dough for savory empanadas
just omit the sugar and the ground cinnamon.
And now we're going to add this to the mixer
and we're going to combine these
just till everything's combined
and then we'll add in the rest of the ingredients.
So you want to make sure that you combined
all your dry ingredients before you add in
all your wet ingredients.
You don't want to have just one speck of ground cinnamon
in one bite and you know, sugar, all in one section.
So you really want to incorporate all those ingredients
before you start adding in your wet ingredients.
And if you don't have a stand mixer at home,
you can easily do this with a spoon or a whisk.
(stand mixer whirring)
You just want to make sure those are nice
and everything's incorporated.
You don't see any cinnamon anywhere in there.
Now we're going to add in the shortening.
And so the shortening also, if you don't have a stand mixer,
you can use a pastry cutting tool
to combine that with the dry ingredients
or you can even use a potato masher
and just mash that all up with the dry ingredients.
So you want to make sure that this is well incorporated
until we add in your milk and eggs.
It's similar to any pie dough that you're adding butter.
So you just want those small crumbles
and make sure your shortening
is just really well incorporated into those dry ingredients.
And so now you can see the shortening is incorporated.
You can see some little balls of shortening in there
and that's perfect.
And that's exactly what you want
before you start adding in your milk and your eggs.
We're using half a cup of milk.
And if you don't want to use milk,
I've actually made this recipe with beer too
which really gives it an amazing flavor
when you're making like a savory empanada.
So you can actually use water as well.
So I love just the flavor of the combination of the milk
with this dough.
Now we're going to add two eggs and I'll just go ahead
and use the same measuring cup and just add them in here.
And I'm going to whisk the eggs in the measuring cup
before I incorporate it into the stand mixer.
It's always safe to break your eggs
in a separate little dish before you add it all in.
You never want to accidentally drop a shell in there.
That's never any fun.
And you want to whisk your milk and eggs together.
You just want to make sure that the egg yolks are broken.
You'll still have that mixing process in the mixer
or if you're doing it by hand
but just as long as you have those egg yolks broken,
you should be safe to go.
This dough is super forgiving.
Now we're going to add it into our dry ingredients
and we're going to blend this.
(stand mixer whirring)
And you can see the dough is already combining by itself
and you want to continue to mix it and combine it
till it all comes together.
Look at this dough.
So soft, so pretty.
You could see the little flecks of cinnamon in there,
going to be a nice and soft and tender dough,
perfect for your empanadas.
So what I like to do once your dough comes together,
is I like to separate into, it just makes it easier
to roll once you're ready to get to that process.
When my mom makes empanadas,
she usually does it like if she's making flour tortillas
and makes little dough balls
and rolls each ball of dough
into like a flat little surface.
I'm not that fancy.
I like to make it a workable dough and use it
like if I'm making a pie dough and roll the whole thing.
So I'll show you a little shortcut
but what I'm going to do is just wrap these up
with Saran wrap and refrigerate them.
And you can even do this, you know, day before,
two days before
and then have your filling ready
and just assemble when you're ready to make your empanadas.
(slow upbeat music)