Ensaimada – Daring Bakers Challenge

It’s Daring Bakers Challenge time of the month again! 

The August Daring Bakers’ Challenge took us for a spin! Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen taught us to make rolled pastries inspired by Kurtoskalacs, a traditional Hungarian wedding pastry. These tasty yeasted delights gave us lots to celebrate. The challenge this month was to make either one of two pastries… Chimney Cakes or Ensaimada or both. I decided to go with Ensaimada because it seemed like it was fun to make! (I saved the Chimney cake recipe to try out another time).

Ensaimada is a spanish pastry from Majorca, Spain. It’s stretched out and slathered with lard or butter, gathered into a rope and coiled up for baking. There are variations of the Ensaimada, with different kinds of fillings – angel’s hair, custard, almond, chocolate or Aprictos. Can you guess what I opted for? Chocolate of course!! – actually it was Nutella (even better!)

The Ensaimadas that have been made by other fellow daring bakers looked amazing so I was excited to try it out. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, as I am always nervous when trying out a new recipe for the first time.

The dough was really soft and sticky which I love!  I doubled the recipe to make a few extras, so I divided the dough into 8 parts.

I used a little butter and more Nutella, and spread that across the rolled out dough, and followed the instructions to coil it up.

So far it looked promising, and I was happy! When I left the dough to rise, it did puff up quite a bit.

When the rolls were done baking, I noticed that the buns were really really soft! I wasn’t sure if that was what I was supposed to get, so I was hoping that the inside was done. I brushed the top with a little melted butter as well (to add a little more flavour). It’s no secret I love the smell of freshly baked bread, and this was just intoxicating!

You can get the Recipe for Ensaimada and Chimney Cake here!

When I finally cut into the roll… I honestly had mixed feelings. The bread has really puffed up inside and I couldn’t see layers anymore (Apart from the nutella layers). It looked like a spiral Babka!

Don’t get me wrong, it tasted phenomenal! I will be making these again, because they were soft, buttery, chocolatey bread rolls! What’s not to like about that?? But I would love to taste an Ensaimada to see what it’s supposed to be like – If it should be soft or crispy.

My husband absolutely loved these too, and took them to work to eat after lunch. We are already planning on making another batch with a different filling – maybe almond filling… that would taste really good!

I always look forward to the Daring Bakers Challenges. They really challenge me, and make me think outside the box. Plus I get to try out amazing new recipes too! This month’s Challenge did not disappoint – Thank you so much Swathi for an amazing challenge!

I hope you try this amazing bread too… and let me know if you already have! You can always find out what’s happening in giramuk’s kitchen on facebook or twitter. So don’t forget to follow!

Until next time! 🙂