Spanish Basque Sobao

Watching too many Spanish Basque shows on Netflix is bad for my waistline. There are so many sweet treats that I never heard before are mentioned in these shows and I just have to try them. I have cooked a few Basque recipes but can't recall the sweet bread sobao. I looked for it in my Spanish cookbooks with lots of Basque recipes; didn't find one. I had to rely on Wikipedia as well as Spanish recipe websites and was only able to get descriptions, ingredients and amounts, but not an actual recipe. I experimented and made just a quarter of the ingredients written on Wiki. It's actually pound cake but with a little less flour and has a little yeast. I don't know what the yeast is for. The finished bread/cake looks like cornbread, is dense, buttery, sweet, and not bad. I'll increase the anise or rum next time I make it.

from Wikipedia

The recipe includes one kilo of sugar, one of butter, 900 grams of flour, 12 eggs, a pinch of salt, lemon zest, a spoon of rum or anise liquor and a bit of dry yeast. The butter and sugar are mixed together, then salt and lemon are added under continuous stirring. One by one the eggs are added with the spoonful of liquor and finally, flour and yeast are incorporated. As soon as all ingredients are thoroughly mixed the dough is ready, filled into a baking dish and baked in the oven.

Sobao Spanish Basque (Inauthentic)

1 cup sugar 

2 sticks salted butter, room temperature

½ teaspoon lemon zest 

¼ tablespoon anise liqueur 

3 large eggs 

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour mixed with 1/16 teaspoon yeast 

• Line on all sides a 6 x 6 square pan with parchment paper; set aside. 
• Preheat oven to 350°F. 
• In a medium bowl, beat butter and sugar together until creamy and pale yellow in color. 
• Add eggs one at a time together with the anise liqueur. Sprinkle a little of the flour if mixture separates. Beat until smooth. 
• Slowly add flour and yeast; mix with spatula until fully incorporated. 
• Transfer into the prepared pan and bake until top is golden brown, about 30 minutes. 
• Let cool completely in the pan on a wire rack before cutting into 2-inch squares.

If someone has an authentic recipe for Sobao, please email me. I'll appreciate it. 😊

Cacao Butter Chocolate Candy

The food grade cacao butter wafers which I used eons ago for homemade lotions and other facial stuff had been sitting in the pantry and already passed the best by date. The wafers looked good so I experimented with making candies. The recipes online seem simple enough to make. Unfortunately, making chocolate candies from scratch using cacao butter is definitely not a piece of cake. It's complicated and frustrating because powdered sugar, powdered erythritol, and powdered milk don't melt that easily. You can whisk it until the end of time and you'll still end up with gritty candy that has cacao butter sitting at the bottom and sugar/milk on top because it needs an emulsifier. Yes, the much maligned lecithin emulsifier.

I had an ancient, maybe 5 years old, small package of soy lecithin granules in the fridge. I threw that away and got sunflower lecithin powder. I didn't know that health nuts take this powder as a supplement. So why not add lecithin if it is not harmful and may even be helpful, if true. It helped bigly in emulsifying specially the white chocolate candy. Also, instead of powdered sugar and milk, I made sweet condensed milk with erythritol and a little white cane sugar 3:1. The sweet milk with the help of lecithin made the candy smooth. For the dark chocolate I added chipotle powder in half of the mixture and chopped homemade candied orange fruit in the other half. Both flavors are delicious!

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Ñora Pepper Flan

This Spanish flan using the pulp of hydrated dried mild red peppers called ñora is a bit odd but it is quite good with a teensy bit of bite. The flavor as a dessert flan is a combination of chocolate, prunes, and coffee. Ñora pepper is used to flavor Spanish sausages, savory dishes, and Romesco sauce. One of the recipes I found in a Spanish website is flan. Yes, sweet dessert flan. I couldn't find the link to the recipe anymore but I still remember it has no milk just like Flan de Naranja which is in one of my Spanish cookbooks. I followed that recipe substituting the pepper pulp and the soaking water. I believe you can also use the more widely available, cheaper, and also mild ancho dried pepper which has a very similar chocolate-y and prune-y flavor.

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No-Knead Bread

No-knead bread became popular in 2012, if I remember correctly, when Jim Lahey made a demo and published a cookbook. I've never made it until today to know if it really makes flavorful bread. The Jim Lahey method leaves the dough to ferment for 12 hours at room temperature then the dough is shaped and baked in a covered preheated cast iron Dutch oven. He updated it to shorten the fermentation to 3 or 4 hours by using very hot water, about 130°F, and adding ¼ teaspoon red wine vinegar.

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