Recipes from Spain

Hello,

On 1st November it’s also a bank holiday in Spain, it’s now common to make some celebrations based on Halloween (or at least what we know about Halloween from TV and movies) like wearing like zombie on party, or kids asking for trick or treat on some homes. But it’s more common (at least in Catalania) to eat sweet potatoes or chestnuts roasted, with lot of places in the street offering them to you. Also is very traditional to buy panellets in bakeries, and this is the recipe I present to you today. They are absolutely delicious, easy to prepare, but they are not quick to cook.

Ingredients:

• 1 sweet potato or potato
• ½ kg icing sugar (or even regular sugar)
• ½ kg ground almonds
• 200 gr pine seeds
• 200 gr almond in small pieces
• Lemon zest
• 100 gr ground coconut
• 2 eggs
• Quince

So lets lets start boiling one sweet potato or regular potato in water for about half hour. Then wait about 25 minutes so you can peel the sweet potato easily and without burning your hands. Crush the sweet potato until you obtain a puree and place in a bowl. Add to the bowl lemon zest,  ½ kg of icing sugar, ½ kg of ground almonds, a few drops of vanilla, and a whisked egg. Mix well everything until you obtain an homogeneous dough, then wrap it in transparent film and let rest in the fridge one night.

Next day divide the dough in 2, with one of the parts make small balls and reserve them. Divide again the remaining dough in two, to one of the parts add ground coconut, mix well and make a cylinder with the dough, cut in small pieces and with your hands give each piece conical shape. Add some flour on the surface you’re working and form a cylinder with the remaining dough, flatten the dough and place strips of quince all along the dough, then wrap the quince with the dough and cut in small pieces.

Now to make the almond panellets we will pass them through a whisked egg and then pass them through almond in very small pieces so this almond pieces stick to the ball. To make the pine seed panellets, pass the balls through the pine seed dish and press the pine seed against the ball so they stick to it. Just pass the quince panellets through the whisked egg. And with the coconut panellets pass each conical piece through egg and then spread ground coconut over them.

Finally before baking paint the almond and pine  seeds panellets with whisked egg. Bake in the oven at 350ºF (180ºC) for 18 minutes and then let rest at least 2 hours before eating them.

Music played in the video (Airport Lounge) was composed by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), also he is the owner of song’s rights which are released under a CC-BY license.