Patties with Cheese (Empanadillas de Queso)

Difficulty: 2/5

Preparation time with ready made wafers: 6 minutes.
Preparation time without ready made wafers: 25 minutes.

The “empanadillas” (patties) is one of these plates you can find in a weeding, christening or some kind of ceremony with a big meal after that. I don’t know exactly why, but they always there. Patties best mate are normally croquettes, they love each other and they always share the same table. In this post I am going to introduce this great dish that kids love by the way.

I could go deep inside to the empanadilla and create super sophisticated dishes that Spain has been developing over the years, but I am going to stick with something simple, something you can prepare in less than 5 minutes and kids will love. If fact my mom used to prepare patties with cheese to my sister and I when we have to celebrate something ( a Friday for example :) ). After this post I will go deeper and deeper showing how to cook from the most traditional patty to the most sophisticated one (it contains black pudding!!!).

Ingredients (for 2 people) :

• 8 Wafers of “La Cocinera” ( If you can’t find this brand,you will find the recipe of how to do it from the scratch).
• 8 Portions of processed cheese.
• Sunflower Oil/Vegetable Oil to fry (one glass)
  

If you do not have Wafers “La Cocinera” you can do it manually (this is the way!):

• 3 cups of flour.
• 1 small tea spoon of salt.
• 5-6 Spoons (big) of water.
• 115gr of Butter.
• 2 Spoons (big) of orange juice.
• 1 Spoon (tea spoon) of Baking Soda.

How to prepare the Wafers:

1. Mix the flour, the salt and the baking soda in one bowl. Use a food processor if you can, so you will get the perfect finish.
2. Add the butter (be sure that the butter is a little bit warm), the orange juice and the water until you managed to create small balls with the dough.
3. Create a big ball with the dough and work it.
4. Stretch the dough with a wooden roller until you get a with a height of 1/2 mm.
5. Cut the dough with a cup/mold so you can create discs. You should get around 15 discs.
6. If you are not going to use them straight away, keep them in the fridge.

How to prepare Las Empanadillas (Patties):

1. Put some flour or paper on the table.
2. Add the discs you have created or the ones from “La Cocinera”.
3. Put a portion of processed cheese in the middle.
4. Fold them.
5. Close them with a fork.
6. Heat the oil in a saucepan (7/10), when the oil is hot fry the patties one by one, when you see that they are brown on the edges, turn the patties. It will take around 4 minutes each.
7. At the same time put some kitchen paper where you want to serve them, to be sure than when you add them absorb all the remaining oil.
8. This is the result:

Cheese patties are better hot…