Empanadas Reloaded

(chocolate and strawberry dessert empanadas, a Sigrid and Kristina invention)


(Angelica's fried crab and cheese empanadas)

Here is Sigrid's official recipe for empanadas.

Ingredients:
1 kilo (about 2 lbs) flour
4 tsp. Baking powder
6 oz. "Manteca," which is basically crisco or other shortening.
Salt
1/2 cup - 1 cup Water
1/2 cup - 1 cup White cooking wine

1. Mix the flour and baking powder in a large bowl.
2. Dissolve the salt in the water (1 cup) in mixing cup.
3. Add 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup wine and shortening to the flour.
4. Begin to mix and knead dough; if dough is dry, add more water and wine in equal portions. If it gets too sticky, you can always add more flour.
5. Let the dough sit for 30 min.
6. You can either follow the directions for filling the empanadas from the other recipe, or you can also break the dough into balls slightly larger than golf balls, and roll those out and fold them individually.
7. Then either fry them in cooking oil or bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can also substitute white flour for whole wheat flour like we did, but we found that the pieces of grain sometimes caused holes in the rolled-out dough, which is fine for baking empanadas, but not for frying them.