Birthday Empanadas

Warren, Vanessa, Me, Paul, Josh and Harrison at my Birthday Party

I have blogged about empanadas in the past (Empanadas: My Ultimate Comfort Food).  I usually make a batch of beef empanadas about once a month, and every once in a blue moon, I'll attempt them with some other filling.  What can I say?  I love empanadas!  For this reason, I've decided to write about them again.

Sarah Making Empanadas

For my 25th birthday I invited a small group of friends over for a little party, and naturally, there was food.  I did not want to have a sit-down meal, as people would be coming at at all hours, so I prepared a lot of finger food.  There were chips and dips, veggies, cheese and crackers, and of course, there were empanadas.  With Sarah's help, I made 60 empanadas, setting a personal empanada baking record. 

While most of the tastiest empanada recipes call for frying, I prefer to make mine slightly healthier.  Granted, I'm not doing it for health reasons, but it's not a bad thing.  I bake my empanadas because when I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, this is how I had them, and I got hooked.  My Buenos Aires-style empanadas de carne consist of sauteed ground beef, diced onion, garlic, diced tomato, some minced chilies, raisins, a few green olives, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper.  This is cooked until the juices evaporate.  When the mixture cools, it is spooned onto the wrappers with a slice of hard boiled egg.  The shell is sealed with water, crimped, brushed with olive oil and baked.  I do not puncture any holes in the shells, allowing them to puff up.

Empanadas about to be Folded and Crimped

Empanadas are a fun food to make with willing a housemate, or, I imagine, with kids.  I do the cooking prepwork by myself, but the assembly is a group effort.

Because I was making so many of them, I decided this was a good opportunity to try a new filling.  In Argentina, my favorite traditional filling after beef was choclo, or corn.  I have attempted versions of this dish in the past, but it never satisfied my nostalgic cravings.  This time, I got it right.  Good corn empanadas are really just creamed corn and some cheese. 

Party Guests

My creamed corn (a first for me) roughly followed this Alton Brown recipe, which I recommend for its use of rosemary (totally not Argentine).  I then mixed in some feta cheese, a few dollops of ricotta, some parsley and paprika and a little extra cream.  I buy the Goya empanada wrappers; I don't know what the difference is, but I used the white wrappers for the choclo and the orange ones for the carne.  The results were both attractive and tasty, and they were a big hit at the party.  I brought the leftovers to my parents, where lots of other folks got to partake.

It was nice to finally find a good corn empanada recipe.  I will certainly make these again.  Also, I think from now on when making empanadas, I am always going to make larger quantities.  It's not much more work, and they are good to eat whenever.

I will end this post with the real culinary highlight of the evening, which was not my empanadas but Vanessa's homemade chocolate birthday cake.

My Birthday Cake

Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Chips