Rosca Continued.. And Conchas!

Well, the Rosca we made a few days ago went very well. We brought it to some friends (from Mexico) to let them try. They seemed to enjoy it! The tradition is to eat it with Hot Chocolate - we used a Mexican brand called abuelita. We dipped the bread into the chocolate. Extra delicious!

This is the baked Rosca.

With baking in mind, we decide to try another well known Mexican sweet bread - Conchas. Conchas are sweet little rolls topped with a crunchy biscuity topping. They can be flavoured in various ways - chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, or just plain. They contain mucho butter, mucho sugar, and mucho flavour! To be honest, you probably shouldn't eat them every day but once in a while, these beauties will do your soul good!

I'll not bother typing the recipe here - that's not really what we do here at Mexican Irish. But it's basically a standard sweet bread - flour, butter, sugar, yeast, eggs and salt.

The first attempt was... interesting. They came out quite hard, but the flavour was right. It didn't really rise properly, but I suspect it's because :

I didn't use enough yeast
I didn't work the dough long enough

When it comes to bread, these two things are pretty important.

We're trying a second attempt tonight. This time, I used a different type of yeast and worked it properly. I spent about 25 minutes kneading. Maybe more, but all I know is my fingers hurt ;)

So, the dough is rising as I type, and with some luck and good headwind, we'll have some good quality conchas tomorrow. Ill let you know!

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