Hey there! The pastry I am going to show you is known in Venezuela as “enrollado”. You can find enrollados in bakeries (which in Venezuela are frequent places to go daily for some fresh bread, and pastries of course). Since I move to the US I’ve been reading different cook books, and noticed that Venezuelan culture involves a lot of European and Middle Eastern food. Just to let you know a little bit of Venezuela. My beautiful South-American country was a preferred destination for immigrants for a big part of the 20th Century. The tropical year-round weather, and the start of the Venezuelan oil industry are, in big part, the reason of this phenomenon.
So Thanks to all these people who decided to move to my piece of heaven in earth, Venezuela is one of those places where you can have a big variety of great food 😉
Ok amigos mios, These are the ingredients:
1 sheet of ready-made puff pastry
Powder sugar for rolling
unsalted butter for the pastry cylinders
1 egg
1 Tbsp. water
2 1-4 cups regular milk
1/2 vanilla bean
5 egg yolks
6 tbsp. powder sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp. cornstarch
For the pastry wrap, you will need one sheet of ready-made puff pastry or you can make your own. I have tried my own pastry before and there is not a difference of flavor between one and the other. Remember to follow the manufacturer instructions to thaw it. Mine ask for 30 minutes out of the freezer prior to roll it. Add enough powder sugar to a flat and clean surface to start rolling your puff pastry. try to roll it keeping the rectangular shape of the dough. you need it about half the thickness it originally came. you can add powder sugar on top on the pastry to avoid to get stick to the rolling pin.
once you have the pastry rolled to the desired thickness, start cutting 1″ thick lines.
You could make the lines thinner or thicker depending on how big you want your enrollados to be. Next add some unsalted butter to the pastry cylinders so your enrollados won’t stick to them (which I forgot to do :P)
As you can see on the last picture, That is what happens when you forget to add butter to your cylinders. But it is not the end of the world. To fix this, you can take a table knife and cut the tips of the pastry and remove them carefully (with the knife because it would be stuck to the cylinder) then put you entire hand around the pastry without putting too much pressure on it and turn it a little bit. Congratulations! you just saved your pastry wraps 🙂
Note: If you don’t have pastry cylinders, you can make some with aluminum foil. cut long strips of aluminum foil and wrap it around two fingers a couple of time to make the shape. Another consideration; If you forget to add butter to your aluminum foil cylinders. hold your pastry with your hand, without pressing too much, and turn the aluminum around softly until you can take it out of the pastry wrap. I KNOW! I should stop forgetting the butter… By the way, I use to have the aluminum foil as cylinders for a while until I decided to get serious and bought them on amazon.
Add parchment paper to a cookie sheet and arrange the enrollados about 1 to 2 inches apart one from the other. Brush them with an egg wash made out of one whole egg and one tablespoon of water whisked together.
Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 12 to 15 minutes.
Now for the creme. This is called Creme Patissiere. I don’t speak french so for me is called crema pastelera. take the 2 1/4 cups of milk and add the 1/2 vanilla bean (I split it in half to get a little bit more flavor out of it) bring to boil but don’t let it boil more than 1 minute. meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks and the powder sugar until pale. Then add the flour and cornstarch making it thicker (whisk any lump in the mixture). take the vanilla bean out of the milk. if a film is formed on top of the milk take it out as well. add the milk to the egg mixture gradually and take it back to the stove at medium temperature and bring to boil whisking constantly to avoid lumps forming on the creme. Let boil for one minute and take out of the stove. Put the creme on a bowl and cover with plastic wrap while cooling down.
The creme should get thicker when boiling but it will get even more thick when cooling down. to see if the creme is the right consistency. Put a wooden spoon inside the preparation take out and make a line with you finger on the back of the spoon. If it draw a channel in the middle it is ok to take out the stove and cool it down.
Now that you have your creme done, take a piping bag and fill the pastry wraps. Dust the tops of the enrollados with some powder sugar.
you can keep you enrollados in the fridge in an air tight container I will eat them within 3 days to keep the nice flavor. Some people like them better after you put them in the fridge. Not me! I could seriously eat them hot or cold 🙂
Note: From 1 sheet of puff pastry you can get 6 regular size enrollados.
Any question? just let me know 🙂
moms with an accent 