Ay, qué rico!

(In Portuguese)

The parents of a friend of mine live in Rio Grande do Sul,
and on her way back from vacation in there, she brought home tons
of the best dulce de leche in the universe: conaprole.
When I say tons, I mean one 3,5kg package and another 1kg.
She gave me the "tinier" one as a gift. I absolutely loved it.
And the first thing that poped in my mind was, of course, alfajor.


I got the recipe here (in Spanish).
I got to tell you: it is awesome.



I followed the instructions of the original recipe, but I would change two things
to make alfajores just like the ones you can eat in Argentina or Uruguay:
I'd use bigger cutters (7 or 8cm diameter), and would roll the batter higher, 1cm thick.
This time, this is how I made it:



- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour (300ml)
- 4/5 cup corn starch (190ml)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 100g softened butter
- 2/5 cup confectioner's sugar (100ml, or 2 cofee cups)
You might as well use regular refined sugar, it won't be too different.
- 1 large yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
- zest from the rind of one lemon
- 4 tablespoons dulce de leche (approximately)
- 5 tablespoons unsweetened dryed grated coconut (approximately)


I started sifting the dry ingredients over a bowl and set aside.
In another bowl, I beat the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon
until they formed a fluffy cream, I strained the yolk and mixed it in.
Next thing was adding the zest and vanilla, and incorporating the
dry ingredients slowly with the spoon until it formed a crumble.
After that, I kneaded the batter with my hands to smooth it out.
I flattened the batter in a disc shape and placed in the fridge for 15 minutes,
covered in plastic.
Then I rolled out the batter on the countertop (one half at a time),
to achieve 0,5cm thickness.
I used 5cm diameter cutters, one with the flat edge, and another with the fluted edge,
and I cut mini flowers with the leftover batter.
I baked the biscuits in ungreased unlined sheet for 16 minutes in pre-heated oven
at 160oC (medium-low temperature).
The biscuits will turn SLIGHTLY golden on the edges and stay whitey on the tops.
They are similar to sequilho (a kind of typical Brazilian biscuits made with starch).
I let them cool in the sheet, then removed with a spoon.
Today in the morning I filled the alfajores with dulce de leche and rolled them
over the coconut, which will keep the dulce from messing around.


Now the trick: since the dulce de leche gets a little hard in the fridge, it't nice
to place a few spoonfuls of it in a small bowl and beat slightly before spreading in the biscuits.
This way it gets softer and easier to handle (avoiding that smartass people like myself
brake biscuits trying to spread the dulce).



The recipe yielded 16 filled alfajores.