Nom Nom: Peach Empanadas

We’ll admit to recently becoming obsessed with a cooking blog we’ve stumbled upon - not because we like to or are particularly adept at cooking, but because, for us, food = porn. The blog is “Bread & Honey” and the recipe we’d like to share today is for peach empanadas. Yes! Wipe your mouth and grab an oven mitt. And vaseline. We think this is a particularly lovely recipe because it’s relatively easy to make (just a lot of mixin’!) and the finished product looks so unbelievably cute. Plus we love peaches and any recipe that involves them in a way the doesn’t make them all mushy and gross and putrid and undelicious (Peaches in a Jell-O mold? Never again.) is a-ok by us.

Ingredients, directions and the money shot are all after the jump:

For the dough

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, diced

4 tablespoons iced water

For the filling

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

2-3 large ripe peaches, pitted and coarsely chopped

And our favorite ingredient:

sugar for sprinkling

Directions:

Lightly butter and flour a cookie sheet.

To make the dough: Combine butter with flour, sugar and salt until coarsely mixed. Add enough water to form a dough. Chill for at least 20 minutes. Roll out on floured board. Cut dough into circles as small as you like but no larger than 9 inches in diameter.

To make filling: In a large bowl, combine sugar, cornstarch, spices and pinch of salt; add peaches and vanilla; stir well.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Spoon peach filling on one half of the circle, leaving an ample border to fold over and seal the other half. Moisten half of the circle on the fruit side with ice water. Fold dough over fruit filling and press edges together with the tines of a fork. You can also spoon filling into the center of a circle, moisten the edges, and put another circle of dough on top and seal. Chill for at least 10 minutes. Brush tops of empanadas lightly with ice water and sprinkle with sugar. With a sharp knife, pierce vent holes in each one. Place on prepared baking sheet. Bake 5 minutes, reduce heat to 350 degrees, and continue to bake for another 10 minutes until the pies are golden. Let them cool and serve warm or cold plain or with ice cream.

We wonder if the empanadas could be brushed with butter instead of ice water for, well, extra butteryness, and to make them a more golden color after baking. But we’d probably eat a butter empanada stuffed with butter on a plate made of butter, so what do we know.

Anyway, yum! A nice summer recipe, especially when paired with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream.

peach empanadas. [Bread & Honey]