The best recipes with olive oil

Recipe for Extremadura Perrunillas with Olive Oil

History

Extremadura Perrunillas with Olive Oil are traditional shortbreads from Extremadura that delight everyone who tries them. You can add walnuts, almonds, pistachios, or orange peel for a light citrus flavor.

These sweets are also made in Andalusia and Castile, especially at Christmas. Although the original recipe called for lard, it can be replaced with olive oil, as this is high in saturated fat.

Let’s also remember that their curious name comes from some cakes baked centuries ago during the transhumance period. The shepherds made the dough from unrefined wheat flour and water, which they cooked over a fire.

This dough was used to bake cakes and feed the dogs that accompanied the cattle.

Ingredients

• 500 g pastry flour
• 150 g sugar
  300 g olive oil (originally lard was used, but to lighten the recipe, we used vegetable oil)
• One tablespoon of sweet anise
• Orange peel
• One teaspoon of orange juice
• ½ teaspoon of cinnamon
• A pinch of salt
• 1 egg + one more, separating the white from the yolk
• 100 g powdered sugar for Decorate

Perrunillas Extremadura

Preparation

For this recipe, we recommend Rincón de la Subbética EVOO, an olive oil from Córdoba, winner of numerous international awards and arguably the best olive oil in the world. First, sift the flour using a sieve or sieve. Place the sifted flour in a bowl and mix it with the orange zest, sugar, and a pinch of salt.

Add the egg and the yolk of the other egg, the tablespoon of anise, and the teaspoon of orange juice. Blend the mixture and form a ball, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rest in the refrigerator for 25 minutes.

After the resting time, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius with a baking sheet and a little olive oil. Place a little flour on a flat surface. Using a rolling pin or a glass bottle, flatten the dough to about 1 cm or 1.2 cm and cut the perrunillas upside down with a small glass.

Gently beat the remaining egg whites until stiff, add a little salt, and then brush the cookies with the egg whites using a silicone brush and sprinkle with icing.

Then place them on a baking sheet and bake at 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.

Recipe for Roscón de Reyes with Olive Oil

For those who don’t want or can’t eat buttered pastries, this Three Kings Roscón with olive oil is perfect, as it doesn’t lose any of its flavor. The Roscón is just as light and rich. Since the butter content in a roscón isn’t too high anyway, it can be replaced with another fat relatively easily.

Professionals recommend using baker’s yeast for pastries in this type of dough, from the best strong flours, essential for making pastries, and osmotolerant yeasts to special bases and boxes for roscones, with surprises and decorative crowns.

Preparation

Dissolve the yeast in water and milk and mix it with the remaining ingredients in a food processor or by hand, including the extra virgin olive oil. Let it rise for two hours, until it doubles or triples in volume, in a place with a stable temperature and away from drafts, in a large bowl covered with a clean cloth.

After this time, knead again (the dough will be a bit sticky, so rub your hands with flour to make it easier to handle). We make a hole in the center and stretch the dough into a circle. At this point, we place the figures of the king and the bean in different places on the roscón, both wrapped in aluminum foil. Once we have the typical donut shape, we carefully place it on parchment paper on the baking sheet we will be using, cover it again, and let it stand.