Pineapple Coconut Empanadas

Yet again, I waited til the last minute to complete the task. And sadly, it did not come out as expected. Case in point:

Burnt around the edges. Because I did a lousy job sealing the edges. Because it was 9PM on July 31st and I knew I couldn’t blow off this month’s First on the First, even though July had been filled with–you guessed it–packing, moving, unpacking, and cleaning. We only just finished clearing and cleaning the apartment on July 27th, and handed over the keys at 9PM on the 30th. Add to it starting up an exercise routine (finally! after all these months of not being able to do anything!), a wedding, an anniversary party, some picnics, and it’s been a purely exhausting month.

Does procrastination ever pay off? But what choice did I have? The month was just plain packed full.

Let’s turn this into a learning experience; we can build from this, so that we all have more success with this recipe in the future.

I substituted the called-for shortening with coconut oil to layer on the coconut experience. I don’t regret this, as the crust was nice and flaky, but I should have made sure the coconut oil was solid when I added it. At this time of year, room temperature coconut oil is more of a liquid and it therefore created a stickier dough. At least, I’d like to believe that’s why the dough was so sticky. Chilling the dough after mixing it together only resulted in semi-hard lumps throughout a messy dough, so I’m not sure that was all that helpful.

You have to make sure you drain the pineapple well. I only had pineapple tidbits, so I drained those and put them for a spin in the mini food processor. I should have drained them post-processing, but I didn’t. I had a lot of seepage because of this, hence the burnt stuff around the edges. Crimping the edge of the dough more securely would have helped, but having less juice to begin with would also be beneficial.

I only used maybe 1/3 of the filling. I should have saved it and made more empanada dough the next day, but I wasn’t thinking and I tossed it. Shame on me! I was so frustrated by the burnt seepage that I couldn’t see past it to try again in the next few days. That’s no excuse! My guess is that you can double the dough recipe without doubling the filling and have enough. Or use the dough as-is and cut the filling in half.

I had some difficulty brushing on the sweetened condensed milk as a glaze. I think next time I would either warm it up a little first or make a glaze from some reserved pineapple juice and powdered sugar. It was just too thick and gloppy and it didn’t spread well. I imagine the pineapple glaze, however, would be a perfect finish.

That said, even with my mistakes, they tasted pretty darn good. Good enough that I ate 2. Even though I’m trying to eat better and have lost some weight recently. I guess this means I’ll be up in the morning again, walking it all away. It’s worth it.

Next month, we’ll be saying goodbye to summer (goodbye to summer?! it’s only just begun!) with cold soups. If you’d like to join us, check out the First on the First tab above for more details on how to participate.

What other empanadas do we have this month?

• Ham Alfredo Empanadas from Hidden Ponies
• Gluten Free Baked Peach Empanadas from Gluten Free Goes Vintage
• Chicken Chorizo Empanadas from Food Babbles