Since the beginning of Lent, I have published two recipes on Lieblingsspeise. My Mallorcan almond tart and now alfajores. Both are calorie bombs and both are Spanish (or South American). I hope you're not all fasting from sweets, otherwise I'll probably soon have to say goodbye to half my readership due to psychological torture...!
Have you heard of alfajores ? I hadn't heard of them until yesterday. They caught my eye while I was browsing, and precisely because they were completely unknown to me (and looked super delicious), I had to try them out for myself right away. So it was a real first for me. I didn't have any experience to draw on for the recipe, so I looked at lots of different recipes (luckily I learned Spanish once...) and tried to find a good compromise. I think I succeeded. 😅
So, what exactly are alfajores?
An alfajor is a sweet pastry that originated in Spain during the Moorish period. However, the version I am presenting here is mainly made in Latin America, using cornflour and desiccated coconut. In Spain, they tend to use almonds, and apparently the alfajor there was not necessarily filled.
In short: calories olé! So far, I've only let people taste them, and they've been very well received. Speaking of Lent, I haven't banned sweets altogether, but I am trying to cut down, and above all, I don't eat anything between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. (intermittent fasting). And that didn't work out with the completion of the biscuits. They'll have to wait until my tea time tomorrow!
Have you ever tried dulce de leche ? It's not very well known here either. It's a mild caramel cream. Very sweet, very sinful and very tasty. You can also make it yourself from condensed milk. But I don't bother with that. My dulce de leche comes from the supermarket shelf. You can find it near the Nutella, by the way. I would also be very tempted to try a Nutella version of alfajores. Just imagine: thick Nutella in a lemony, crumbly biscuit with a coconut edge. Or maybe with lemon curd. It's making my mouth water just thinking about it.
alfajores
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Mix the butter, icing sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolks, rum and a pinch of salt well with a hand mixer or food processor. Then stir in the two types of flour and the baking powder and knead everything into a smooth dough.
- Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to rest in the refrigerator for at least 40 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 170°C top/bottom heat.
- Roll out the dough on a floured work surface to a thickness of approx. 3-4 mm.
- Line two baking trays with baking paper or a baking mat.
- Cut circles out of the dough and place them on the baking trays. Knead the leftover dough again, roll it out and cut out more circles.
- Bake the biscuits for approx. 14 minutes. They should remain light in colour and not brown.
- Allow the biscuits to cool. In the meantime, place the caramel cream and coconut flakes in a shallow bowl.
- Spread a thick layer of dulce de leche on one biscuit, place a second biscuit on top and press down gently. The caramel cream should ooze out slightly at the sides.
- Roll the biscuits with the caramel edge in the coconut flakes.
- Store in a cool place so that the dulce de leche does not leak out of the alfajores.
