Simple Spanish Food

Bizcocho de chocolate: A Spanish Chocolate Cake for Breakfast or Merienda

Bizcocho is a type of cake Spaniards eat for breakfast, at the eleven o'clock coffee break, for the merienda (a snack at six in the afternoon or so), or even for dessert.  Though they resemble pound cakes in appearance, bizocochos are much lighter and less sweet.  Like magdalenas and so many other Spanish cakes,  bizocho is really meant to be dipped in coffee, tea, hot chocolate, or even a sweet wine. If you are unfamiliar with bizcocho, it's best to think of it as a sort of soft biscotti.

Bizcochos come in many different flavors--orange, lemon, coffee, coconut, and so on. This one is chocolate. I got the base recipe from the classic Spanish cook book Manual de Cocina, but I threw in some untraditional chocolate chips.

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients

6 tablespoons of butter (or substitute coconut oil for a coconut-y bizcocho)

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 and 1/4 cups of flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/3 cup of chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix the butter and the sugar until creamy. Stir in the eggs and the milk. Stir in the cocoa and the baking power. Stir in the flour a little at a time, and finally the chocolate chips.

Rub a loaf pan with butter. Dust it with flour.  Pour the batter in.

Bake it at 350 for 35-45 minutes.  Insert a toothpick. If it comes out clean, it's done.

 

 

 

A Spanish "English-style" chocolate cake, tarta de chocolate a la inglesa

The original recipe for this cake comes from the classic Spanish cookbook Manual de Cocina.  It's called tarta de chocolate a la inglesa, chocolate cake in the English-style. Maybe a reader who knows about cake history will be able to explain the connection. Whatever this cake's origins, it's nice.

I used natural brown sugar instead of white and virgin coconut oil instead of butter. The result was flavorful, but perhaps too coconut-ty for some tastes. Use butter and white sugar if you like a milder cake.  

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

for the cake:

6 1/2 ounces of dark chocolate

1/2 cup coconut oil (or butter)

1/2 cup sugar (brown or white)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

4 eggs, separated

for the icing:

3 1/2 ounces of dark chocolate

1/2 cup of sugar

6 tablespoons of water

 

First, make the cake.

Grate the chocolate.

 Beat the butter (or coconut oil) and sugar. Add the yolks of four eggs (reserve the whites). Mix. Add the chocolate, and mix again. Mix in the flour bit by bit.

 

In another bowl, whip the egg whites to peaks.

Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture.  Pour the batter into a buttered and flour-dusted cake pan.

Bake the cake in a 350 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Insert a toothpick or knife point in the center. If it comes out clean, it's done.

Let the cake cool for fifteen minutes in the pan. Remove the cake from the pan and let it cool on a rack.

Make the icing. Melt 3 1/2 ounces of chocolate. Boil a half cup of sugar in six tablespoons of water until it becomes caramel. Stir the caramel bit by bit into the melted chocolate.

The chocolate will begin to clump and take on the texture of icing.

Ice the cake with the frosting, and there you have it.

This cake is fantastic with a dark, sweet Spanish wine.  A Malaga or a Pedro Ximénex sherry would be perfect.

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #1: Christmas Cookies (mantecados y polvorones)

Today I'm beginning a series of posts on Spanish ways to enjoy the holidays. Number one on the list (and one of Ana's favorites) is Christmas cookies.

Spanish Christmas cookies  include polvorones, mantecados, roscos de vino, and alfajores, to name a few.  These and other types of cookies are enjoyed throughout the holiday season. Usually a combination of different sorts of cookies are served on a platter, so each guest can choose the cookies he or she likes.  In texture, most of them resemble an extra crumbly shortbread. The cookies are often flavored with almonds, citrus zest, cognac, or cinnamon.

Polvorones translates as "dusties." They're named for their texture because they're extremely crumbly--so much so that in Spain they are individually wrapped to protect each cookie.

Mantecados are traditionally made with a high quality lard (manteca means lard in Spanish), but they don't have to be. I have made them with coconut oil, which gives the cookies the same crumbly texture along with a coconut flavor.

For a recipe, see my post on easy Spanish coconut Christmas cookies (mantecados de coco).

I also have a recipe for Sevilla-style Christmas cookies (polvorones sevillanos).

 

The on-line Spanish food store La Tienda also carries polvorones and mantecados, along with many other types of cookies. Check out La Tienda's Christmas cookie page for more information.

Easy Spanish Palm Pastries--palmeras y palmeritas

Palm pastries--palmeras o palmeritas--are extremely popular in Spain.   All of the bakery and pastry shops have them displayed in the windows, plain or covered with chocolate, and in most Spanish cities you can't walk more than a few blocks without passing a bakery or pastry shop. They're usually quite large--the size of a Hallmark card--and unlike the smaller, more delicate French-style pastries, which are also popular in Spain, they're enjoyed as street food.

As a girl, Ana's sister Marta would eat so many palm pastries that her uncle Rafael would warn her: "Girl, if you keep eating palmeras, you'll start making dates!"--meaning that she would transform into a date palm, for which the pastry is named.

I usually eat a chocolate-covered palm pastry on the second day of our trip to Madrid, just when the jet lag and altitude change begin to make me woozy.  (Madrid's altitude is nearly 700 meters, and living in Central Florida, I'm used to sea level).  A palmera de chocolate never fails to perk me up.

Palm pastries are basically strips of Spanish puff pastry--hojaldre--rolled up on either side into a heart shape.  You can use regular French-style puff pastry or frozen puff pastry. In the near future I'll give a recipe for hojaldre with a palm oil base, which is what I used for these.

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

one sheet of puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

sugar

butter or oil for the pan

melted chocolate (if you'd like chocolate-covered palmeras)

Place the sheet of puff pastry on a floured surface.  Brush it with beaten egg. Sprinkle it with sugar. Roll up the sheet from both sides, so the rolls meet in the middle

Slice the rolled puff pastry into pieces 3/8 inch (1 centimeter) thick.

Place the slices on a greased baking sheet.

Sprinkle them with sugar.

Bake them in a hot (500 degree) oven for 12-15 minutes, or until golden, and cool them on a rack.

You can eat these as soon as they cool as they are or, as mentioned above, coated with chocolate. They're great with tea, coffee or hot chocolate at mid-morning or for the late afternoon snack--la merienda. They're also very good served with desserts such as strawberrries and cream or yogurt.

 

 

So is Coconut Oil Still Supposed to Be Bad for You?

The verdict is apparently still out, but according to Melissa Clark's recent article in the New York Times, coconut oil is not nearly as bad as once thought, and may actually be good for us. 

The coconut oil scare reminds me of how Andrés, my father-in-law, used to tell us that back in the seventies olive oil was thought to be a "bad fat." Many Spaniards  switched to sunflower oil.  Not only did Andrés refuse to try sunflower oil--a true Spaniard, he found the very idea disgusting--he never carried it in his wholesale food business despite the demand at the time. He considered it all a bunch of nonsense, and he was right. 

Hopefully, the story with coconut and palm oils will end in a similar way.  For the moment, the news about these oils is improving. 

What I do know for sure is that coconut oil makes fantastic cookies. Check out my posts on baking Spanish-style cookies with coconut oil.

In the near future, I hope to be making Spanish pastries with these oils. A chocolate-covered palmerita--little palm-tree pastry--made with actual palm oil maybe?

 

Spanish Christmas Cookies: Sevilla-style Dusties (polvorones sevillanos)

Polvorones are among the many types of cookies enjoyed during the Christmas holidays in Spain. (See my post on easy Spanish coconut cookies (mantecados de coco) and other Spanish Christmas cookies for more information).  The unique flavor of these Sevilla-style polvorones comes from toasted wheat flour, generous amounts of cinnamon and cognac, and, in this recipe, virgin coconut oil, which I have substituted for the traditional lard.  The coconut oil gives these polvorones the same crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth texture lard would. 

These polvorones are suitable for vegans.  They're easy to make, though potentially dangerous, as all of the alcohol in them typically explodes during the baking (See Warning below).  I found the base recipe for these cookies in the classic Spanish cookbook, Manual de Cocina.

Here's how to do it.

Ingredients.

2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/2 cup of sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1 cup of virgin coconut oil

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1/2 cup of cognac (or a good brandy)

First toast the flour.  Line a baking sheet with parchment.  Spread the flour out onto it.  Put it six inches or so under a hot broiler. The flour should toast quickly--in less than a minute if your broiler is hot--so don't let it burn.  Stir the flour around some until the surface is mostly white again.  Toast the flour again.  Repeat two or three more times until the flour takes on a toasted tan color throughout.

Let the toasted flour cool.

Combine the coconut oil, sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl.  Stir well.  Add the cognac.  Stir some more.  Gradually add the flour, stirring it in bit by bit.  A very stiff, crumbly dough will form.  It will only barely hold together.

Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500.

Roll the dough out on a clean surface until it's about half an inch thick.  It will crack and try to fall apart on you.  Just pat it together as best as you can.  With a small wine glass or a 1 1/2 inch cookie cutter, cut out the polvorones.

Gently place them on a cookie sheet. (The same you toasted the flour on is fine).  Handling them requires some delicacy.

Sprinkle them with sugar and bake them for 8-10 minutes in a 500 degree oven.

WARNING: BE CAREFUL.  The vapors of all the cognac will build up in the oven and will often explode.   This shouldn't matter if you keep the oven closed--though the noise can be frightening--but it could be extremely dangerous for those cooks who frequently open the oven door to peek.  Don't peek, and when the time comes to open the oven, open it slowly and stand as far back as you can.

Carefully remove the polvorones from the oven.  They should be toasty brown.  Allow them to cool on the pan. Traditionally these are individually wrapped in decorative paper and enjoyed throughout the holiday season.

   

 

Easy Spanish Coconut Cookies (Mantecado de coco)

Spaniards eat lots of cookies, especially around Christmas time.  There are  pastas de té (tea cookies),  polvorones (dusties), roscos de vino, and alfajores just to name a few.  They may be flavored with lemon, cinnamon, or coconut.  The crumbly texture of many of these cookies depends on lard, though some of them are butter based, and the anise and sesame flavored tortas de aceite actually have an olive oil base.

  Recently I found a recipe in La Cocina de Mamá: The Great Home Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas for perrunillas--a sort of cookie I'd never heard of--spiced with cinnamon and lemon zest.

 

As an experiment, I replaced the lard in this recipe with coconut oil. I had read that coconut oil can give an incredible  texture  to cookies, and we're really pleased with the crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth quality of these.  The original recipe called for lemon zest and cinnamon, and I included both here, but the taste of these cookies is mainly of coconut.  The result is very similar to the Spanish cookie called mantecado de coco.

8 ounces of virgin coconut oil

1/2 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 teasoon of grated lemon zest

1 egg, separated

2 cups of all purpose flour

Stir the coconut oil and sugar with a fork until well blended. Add the cinnamon, lemon zest, the egg yolk, and the flour.  Roll out the dough on floured surface to a thickness of 1/2 inch. Cut the cookies with a two-inch cutter.  (I used  the rim of a small wine glass). 

Line a cookie sheet with foil. Arrange the cookies on it, giving them some space. Brush with beaten egg whites and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake them for 13-15 minutes in a 425 degree oven.  These cookies also come out fantastic (and with even better texture) when baked in a kamado/Big Green Egg.

You could serve these with tea, coffee, or  hot chocolate. They're really good with the spiced dessert wine hipocrás too. Just click "Wine and Other Drinks" on the sidebar for the recipe.