Horchata Conchas
These pastries are not fussy and look very impressive. A great addition to your next weekend breakfast spread.
Last week’s post about rice fragrances had me thinking about rice-based desserts. And I have to come clean to you guys - I really, really hate rice pudding. To me, traditional, milky rice pudding is the ugly, homely cousin of sticky rice. In Eastern Europe kids grow up eating hot cereal (any grain cooked into a gruel in hot milk) and in my ripe age I am still a little bit too traumatized from these breakfasts to enjoy a bowl of sweet soupy rice. Perhaps it is a textural thing as I love everything to do with the dish (rice, cinnamon, milk) in other settings, such as in horchata. Naturally, I decided to develop a horchata-flavoured treat to share with you guys. So without further ado,
Horchata Conchas
Approx 30 mins active cooking time / 3.5 hours total time
Dough
3/4 C + 3 tbsp milk
2 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 c room temperature butter
1 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
1/3 white sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
4 c APF
Craquelin top
3/4 c APF
3 tbsp rice flour
1/2 c soft butter
2/3 c white sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
Horchata Frosting
1 c soft butter
300g condensed milk (roughly one small can)
3 tbsp horchata concentrate
almond extract
pinch of salt
Method:
Mix together the yeast and the 3 tablespoons of warm milk in the bowl of your stand mixer. Set aside.
Once your yeast mix shows evidence of life, add in everything except the flour. Give a rough mix.
Dump in all of your flour at once. Mix with a dough hook on slow for about a minute and then increase speed to medium and mix for another five. By the end, your dough should be smooth and bouncy and not sticking to your hands.
Cover your dough with a clean kitchen towel and leave to rise in a cosy place for about an hour.
In the meantime, make your craquelin top. Mix everything together - you can do this by hand or in a stand mixer. Shape your craquelin paste into TEN balls (you don’t need to weigh here, don’t worry about being precious with it.)
Check in on your concha dough. If it’s doubled in size, we are ready to rock. Turn your dough out onto a clean surface and divide it into TWELVE balls (yes, I know we have ten craquelin tops… don’t worry!) You can, and should use a scale for this part, and each dough ball should be about 100 grams.
Palm roll your dough balls on the counter until they are smooth and beautiful! Set aside. If you don’t know how to palm roll, here’s a video:
Take your craquelin tops and flatten them into disks. Using a rolling pin, flatten them out into a circle that’s bigger than the diameter of your buns - should be about 1.5-2 mm thick. Use a cookie cutter to stamp rounds out of the craq paste. Save the edge trimmings - they will yield you enough to cover the last two buns. Once you’ve rolled a craq disk, drape it over a bun. Continue until all buns are wearing craquelin hats.
Use a knife to gently etch a pattern in your craquelin tops. You don’t need to actually cut through the craq, that may cause it to split apart during the bake - just drag the knife across the dough with a very light touch.
Allow your buns to rise again. If you are prepping ahead, this would be a good time to wrap and refrigerate the dough to bake off at a later time. Whether you’re baking straight away or later, make sure you give the buns about 30-45 minutes to warm up and puff a little more. Preheat your oven to 350.
Bake your buns for about 20-23 minutes on the centre rack. They will be a little pale but that’s okay! We don’t want them drying out.
In the meantime, make your horchata filling. Whip your soft butter + pinch of salt until it becomes very light, almost white in colour.
Start emulsifying in your condensed milk - stream it into the mixing bowl with the mixer running on medium-high. Once you’ve introduced all the condensed milk, stream in the horchata concentrate. You will notice they are very similar in texture!
Depending on the brand of horchata mix you’re using, you will wish to taste your frosting at this point to check if the flavour is prominent enough. I added a few drops of almond flavouring to mine to give it a little bit more pop. If you want to add vanilla here, you definitely can - I chose not to as to not compete with the rice, almond and cinnamon already at play here. Once everything is together and tasting good, allow your mixer to run on SLOW for two minutes to smooth out the frosting. It may look like it’s splitting, but I promise, it will come together in spite of all; just keep gently mixing and scraping down your bowl.
Once your buns are out of the oven, it’s very important that they are completely cool before you fill them with cream. If they are even a little bit warm, your horchata frosting will split and leak out of the bottom. Make a tiny incision at the bottom or side of each concha with a paring knife. Insert a piping bag with the horchata cream inside of the hole and fill your buns until they start to look plump or give a little resistance.
And that’s it! Enjoy!
xo Shrimp
