Empanadas anyone?

We made some empanadas the other day. Yummy! For those of you that don't know what they are, they are baked turnovers filled with something sweet.

I fill them with sweet potato because that's the only way my boys eat sweet potatos. But you can fill them with pineapple, cherry, strawberry or whatever else floats your boat.

So gather up your ingredients, and your helpers and let's make some.

First, you clean off your kitchen countertop.
Then you gather your ingredients :

For the dough
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup shortening
12 TBL water

Filling:
whatever you want. I open a can of yams, add some butter and brown sugar and microwave it.

Mix your dough and make small balls.

Roll out your balls to flat round tortillas. (They can be crooked tortillas)

Put filling in the middle of each tortilla.

Then you break up fights because your kids want to use the dough balls as weapons to knock each other down.

Then you make sure that the tortillas they are making are free of snot, fur (Noah says he has fur and not hair, just like the dog ), and dirt from when the dough ball accidentally fell on the floor.

And you don't put the above said tortillas in your batch to bake.

You roll the tortilla over the filling and seal the edges. Prick the top of the turnovers with a fork to allow steam to escape. Or else the turnovers will blow up in your nice clean oven.

Bake them at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes or until browned.

Entertain kids by letting them eat raw dough and using dirty used snotty, furry dough as play-doh.

Wait until the empanadas (turnovers) are cooled off before you bite into them. See all the yummy stuff inside?

"I'm coming pretty little scrumptulous empanada"