Uggg.

Empanadas are hard to make. Well, to be specific, they’re hard to “repulgue.” Watching the videos in yesterday’s post made me think “Wow, this is going to be a breeze.”

So naive. So VERY naive.

The videos made it look easy breezy because those people had probably repulgued (can you say that?) thousands of empanadas. When you have made zero, repulging (probably can’t say that) is not easy at all.

So, I hope you’ll cut me some slack when you see what I made for this weekend. At least I didn’t resort to the fork (although I thought about it).

Although the empanadas look like the product of a kindergarten craft project, lots of love and effort went into their making. My friend and I spent the better part of the day making dough, cooking the filling, cooling the filling, filling the filling into the filling… huh? what?

Sorry, I had some sangria in there somewhere, too.

Now that you’ve been updated, let’s talk dulce de leche.

Dulce de leche is made by cooking sweetened condensed milk for several hours until it thickens and turns a caramel color. Cooked for a shorter time frame makes a more runny sauce, cooked for longer makes for a solid texture.

Dulce de leche can be used on a number of foods like ice cream, cookies, cheesecake, etc. In fact, Dulce de leche is used a lot like caramel sauce.

Two ways to make dulce de leche:

1. Poke 2 holes in can lid. Place can in a pot of simmering water for 2-4 hours. Keep water level one inch below can edge at all times.

2. Poke 2 holes in can lid. Place can in a crock pot filled most of the way with water. Cook on low for 8 hours.

Store the dulce de leche in the fridge for a while, but don’t take my word for how long, since I get scared and throw things out sooner than I should. Except for prunes because a little old lady at Sams Club told me they’d keep forever in my fridge. So there they’ve sat, forever.