Daring to do it: Empanad Gallega

Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!

I have wanted to try empanads for a long time.  But I am an American.  So I only know empanadas as those small, individual hand-pie like treats.  Well, it turns out that those are not Spanish empanadas.  They would be called empanadillas...  Empanada are, essentially, bread dough surrounding almost any filling you can think of!  Patri gave us some great recipes to work from, but also gave us the freedom to play with our food.
I made two empanada this month.  The first was a dessert empanada using the wheat dough recipe Patri gave us.  The dough came together beautifully and easily, and rolled out nicely:

The filling was a combination of lots of things I thought might taste good together.  Almonds, walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and, of course, chocolate chips all chopped together: 

I did add some margarine in there, too, since I was a little concerned that the filling wouldn't be cohesive enough to stay together:

After the top was put on and decorated with dough, Little Girl went to town decorating the empanada with colored sugar:

While the recipe called for using an egg-wash, I skipped this step.  Even so, the empanada had a beautiful brown color when it was baked:

 As for the filling?  Well, it was plenty cohesive!

And it tasted great.  The one change I would make would be to omit the raisins next time.  They simply didn't add anything to the flavor or texture like I thought they would.

 

I also made a savory sourdough empanada.  I had overfed Eve, my starter, and wanted to put her to good use.  This is the recipe I used.

The dough was a lot wetter and stickier than the traditional one which Patri had given us.  It was a bit harder to roll out, even with extra flour...

I made chik'n cheese steak (fake chik'n strips, onions, peppers and garlic sauteed together, adding in a bunch of  shredded cheese) as the filling:

 Little Girl wanted to decorate the top with the extra dough:

I did make a non-dairy version for Baby Girl, as she has a milk allergy:

 This was definitely a winner!

 

These empanada are so versatile and so much fun!  Thank you so much, Patri, for both teaching us about empanada, and for encouraging so much creativity!  I know this is a recipe I will use, and play with, a lot in the future!

If you are looking for some more ideas, check out what my fellow Daring Bakers did with their empanada!