Alfajores

Alfajores Recipe -

 

Ingredients

Cornstarch - 1 cup

Flour - 1 cup

Baking powder - 1 teaspoon

Unsalted butter - 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks)

Sugar - 3/4 cup

Egg yolks - 2

Dulce de leche - 1 cup

Directions

1.      Sift the cornstarch, flour and baking powder together in a medium bowl. In a mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, beating until they are incorporated.

2.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture in 3 batches, allowing each batch to become incorporated before adding the next.

3.      Form the dough into a disc without handling it too much. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

4.      Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove the dough to a lightly floured work surface and roll out to about 1/8-inch thick. Cut out 40 2-inch rounds, and carefully place the rounds on two lightly greased cookie sheets.

5.  Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, but not so long that they begin to brown. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove the cookies to wire racks and cool completely.

6.      Spread about 2 teaspoons of dulce de leche on the flat half of a cookie and cover it with the flat half of another cookie to form a sandwich. Repeat with the remaining cookies. If desired, sprinkle the finished cookies with powdered sugar.

I tend to think that the richer, the better when it comes to desserts. That’s why, for my first stop in my 'around the world' blog posting, I decided to bake Alfajores; South American dulce de leche sandwich cookies. When I found this recipe, I immediately thought, yum. These cookies actually originate in Spain, but are much more popular in South America. They are very common and traditional in several Latin American families. The dulce de leche is used as a topping on many other foods, like muffins, cakes, and ice cream. This dessert is made up of two, thin shortbread cookies, with a dulce de leche (caramel spread) in the middle. The original Alfajores recipe calls for 1 cup of dulce de leche. I don’t know about everyone, but I don’t have that just sitting in my fridge. So, I searched around, and found a pretty easy-looking recipe for it. As you can see, the recipe says to simmer for about an hour to an hour and a half until it thickens or caramelizes. Well... more like three and a half hours! I kept looking over my recipe and ingredients to check and see if I had forgotten or missed something – I didn’t. So, I just kept the caramel mixture on the stove, over low heat, just like the directions instructed. Even though it took some time, everything worked out in the end. The only other problem I had was with the cookie dough. It was slightly difficult to roll out thin enough because it kept breaking apart. Eventually, I figured everything out, and the cookies were delicious! The dulce de leche was creamy, and the overall cookie was very rich, just as I had predicted. A tip for anyone wanting to make these cookies: they taste much better if you refrigerate them for a while. This allows the caramel filling to harden, so it’s easier to eat, and in my opinion, it makes it taste a whole lot better! I definitely recommend Alfajores to anyone with a sweet tooth!