The night of is coming Halloween and in my house, in Catalonia, we celebrate a "mix" party in which elements of this party and elements of the "Castanyada", a traditional holiday of this date where chestnuts and panellets.
The panellets become marzipan made with different forms and ingredients that (now I am subjective) are very good and that (now I am objective) have a calorie "that pa what". Normally they are made at home, they are made a lot and all Catalans calmly throw themselves a week eating panellets, until they are finished, leaving the diets for later days (or for the summer, that's what it is for).
Many of the people who have never tried panellets often ask what they are, what they know and how they are made. Taking advantage of a panellets recipe Last year offered by our partner Juana Trujillo of Direct to the Palate, we will explain below how to carry them out (I have been eating them for three days ... I can not stop, I am weak).
Ingredients for 75 panellets
We will need 700 grams of ground almonds, 500 grams of sugar, 2 small sweet potatoes and 2 whole eggs. This already gives a hint of the calories they may have.
To decorate the panellets and give them different flavors we will need pine nuts, chopped or rolled almonds, 1 envelope of soluble coffee, grated coconut and icing sugar.
How to prepare panellets
The first thing is to make the dough. To start we boil the sweet potatoes until they are tender. At that time we put them in a bowl and chamfer them.
In the same bowl we add the rest of the ingredients: ground almonds, sugar and eggs. The Mix everything until we get a homogeneous paste.
Now comes the time to diversify by flavors. We separate the dough into three portions. One of them will stay as it is. In the second we take the soluble coffee envelope and mix it again. In the third we take a few tablespoons of grated coconut and mix it too (if you are not very fond of coconut or children do not just convince them, separate a small amount). Then We store the three doughs in the fridge and let them rest for at least six hours.
After that time we turn on the oven and put it at 180ºC. We take the masses and begin to make the forms that we think. The best form is the ball, easy and low aesthetic risk. When I made them more than a decade ago, I made Darth Vader's helmets, skulls and things like that, but neither does he need to "kill himself" so much.
When we are with the dough that does not carry anything, those who are going to take pine nuts or almonds embedded better we make them round, so we roll them on the pine nuts and almonds so that they are hooked. Once done we beat an egg and with a kitchen brush we painted all the panellets. We put baking paper in the baking tray and we put on top the already painted panellets.
Then we take the coconut dough, make balls or whatever we want and batter them with grated coconut. While we are doing them we are also putting them on the tray.
Now let's go for the coffee-flavored dough. We make balls or whatever we like and we roll the panellets with icing sugar (I'm salivating). We also put them on the tray.
Once we have the tray prepared with all the raw panellets we place it in the central part of the oven so that they cook for 10 minutes. After this time, we light the gratin and leave it for about 5 minutes or until golden brown (those that have a painted egg will be browned, of course).
Eating the Panellets
To eat them, just wait for them to cool, although they tend to be richer when they have been done for one or two days (subjective data).
If you want to recreate a little more when making them I leave you with a couple of photos of those that were made at home a few years ago, in case they serve as an example.
Here you see some made with normal dough, glazed and with a cherry, the following are those of normal dough with pine nuts and the last ones are coconut coated with grated coconut.
In this other image you can see panellets with normal dough bathed in chocolate, then in the middle some elongated ones with a piece of quince and icing sugar (salivating again) and the last ones are of coffee, with nailed almonds.
As you see, with imagination you can make panellets with a lot of variety that surely your children will love.
