Shortbread Calaveritas

I did these as a project with my young students after talking about Día de Muertos and it was so much fun!

Basic shortbread cookie.

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 cup butter
2 cups all purpose flour

DIRECTIONS:

In a bowl, mix room temperature butter with the sugar on low speed.
Slowly incorporate the flour. The mixture will look dry but keep going, it will come together.

flatten to 1/4" and cut out your cookie shapes (aprox 20 large cookies 5"x3")

Cook at 300F* for 30 min and move from cooling rack immediately, don't leave them on the baking sheet.

Basic Icing.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup confectioners sugar
3 teaspoons of milk
vegetable coloring

DIRECTIONS:

Mix milk and sugar and add more milk until you get the right consistency. Be sure to add drops at a time! Very little liquid goes a long way with this kind of sugar :)

Separate in batches and add a couple of drops of color.

Paint your Calaveritas and remember to use as many colors as you want :)

Pan de muerto (Day of the Dead sweet mexican bread)

From pretty much everywhere, lots of hit and miss before ending with this ;-)

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup white sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 teaspoons orange zest

1/4 teaspoon anise extract

DIRECTIONS:

Heat the milk and the butter together in a medium saucepan, until the butter melts. Remove from the heat and add them warm water. The mixture should be around 110 degrees F (43 degrees C).

In a large bowl combine 1 cup of flour, yeast, salt, anise extract and 1/4 cup of sugar. Beat in the warm milk mixture then add the eggs and orange zest and beat until well combined. Stir in 1/2 cup of flour and continue adding more flour until the dough is soft.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Place the dough into a lightly greased bowl cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. This will take about 1 to 2 hours. 

Punch the dough, place it onto a baking sheet, shape it with a knob on top and bones/stripes from top to bottom, loosely cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until just about doubled in size.

Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for about 35 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven let cool.

Cover with granulated sugar

Agua Fresca de Fresa (Strawberry)

From somewhere on the web

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb strawberries, stems removed and sliced in half
3-4 tbs sugar

2 1/2 cups cold water

DIRECTIONS:

Puree the strawberries in a blender or food processor. Force puree through a fine mesh strainer to get rid of all the seeds. Pour all the sugar into the seedless puree and let it sit in the fridge for 2 hours.

Add the water to the strawberry mixture, stir well and serve.

Salsa Tampico

From me myself and I

Salsa tampico is a dressing used in Mexico.

INGREDIENTS:

4 bars of chopped surimi (fake crab)
1/3 cup mayo
1/4 mexican cream
1/4 chopped onion
1 chopped serrano chile

DIRECTIONS:

Put the chopped onion and serrano in a food processor and pulse 8-10 times, add chopped surimi and pulse again for 8-10 times and finally add mayo and cream and mix on high until all ingredients are well blended. Add salt if needed.

You can top deep fried sushi with this dressing or serve it over white or fried rice, DELICIOUS!