Rosquillas

Ingredients

The dough

• 500 gmasa harina
• or fine maize flour
• 400 ghard dry cheese
• queso seco, finely grated
• 150 gbutter or lard
• softened
• 2eggs
• about 120 ml milk
• 1 teaspoonsalt

Sometimes added

• 80 gsugar
• for the sweeter kind
• 1 teaspoonaniseed
• ground
• 50 ggrated panela

To bake

• a clay oven
• or a hot domestic oven
• lined trays

To serve

• with strong black coffee
• for dunking

Directions

1. Grate the cheese as finely as you can. Use the fine side of the grater. It should be almost a fine powder. Combine the masa harina and cheese. Add the salt and the ground aniseed. Whisk them together thoroughly first. Take a moment over the mixing.
2. Rub the softened butter into the mixture. Rub it in with your fingertips. Work it until it looks like sand. Adding the wet is the next step. Beat the eggs and then add them. Add the milk in gradually after. Add only enough to bring it together.
3. Add it in just a splash at a time. Judging the dough takes a squeeze. Squeeze a handful in your fist. It should hold together firmly. Add milk or masa to correct it. Knead it in the bowl for two minutes. It should become smooth and pliable. Cover the dough and let it rest. Give it about twenty full minutes.
4. Check the texture again after. Roll the dough into small balls. Make them all about walnut sized. Keep every one of them the same size. Weigh them if you want them exact.
5. Roll each ball into a short rope. Roll it under your flat open palm. Make it about one finger thick. Keep it even along its length. Thin ends burn before the middle cooks. Bring the two ends round together. Press them firmly to join them.
6. Press and smooth the join over. Check each ring before baking. Keep the hole reasonably large. Heat the oven to one hundred and eighty degrees. These must dry out as well as bake. Bake them for about twenty-five minutes. They should be golden and firm. Turn the oven off and leave them in. Give them another fifteen minutes there.
7. Lift them out onto a wire rack. Let them all cool right down completely. A slightly soft one firms right up. Break one of them in half when cold. It should snap rather than bending.
8. Return them to a low oven if so. Give them another ten minutes. Keep them in a sealed dry tin. A properly sealed tin keeps them crisp. Serve strong black coffee alongside. Dip the ring into the hot coffee. Hold it there for a few seconds. It softens and takes up the coffee.

Technique

• These are meant to be hard and dry, which is deliberate rather than a fault: a soft biscuit disintegrates in coffee where a hard dry one holds together and softens gradually. Bake them until they feel light for their size, then turn the oven off and leave them in another fifteen minutes so the residual heat dries them further — a useful traditional trick. A cold one should snap rather than bend; if it bends it is still moist inside and needs another ten minutes.
• The cheese must be hard, dry and salty, grated almost to a powder: a moist cheese makes a soft dough and melts and oozes out, where a dry one binds and flavours instead. That dryness is genuinely essential.
• Masa harina is nixtamalised maize flour, treated with lime in an ancient Mesoamerican technique that releases the niacin, prevents pellagra in maize-based diets and makes the dough bind — ordinary cornmeal will not work.

Substitutions

• A mild hard dry grating cheese is the nearest substitute for queso seco; parmesan is too strongly flavoured. No substitute is really the same and the atlas gives it plainly rather than pretending they match.
• Sugar, ground aniseed and grated panela make the sweet version, where the savoury one is cheese and salt only; both are genuinely made.

Variations

• Roll each rope evenly to about a finger’s thickness, since thin ends burn before the middle cooks, and overlap and smooth the join firmly — a weak join opens in the oven. Keep the hole reasonably large, since it closes a little as they bake and a closed hole is simply a biscuit.
• Bake at a moderate one hundred and eighty degrees, since these must dry out as well as bake and high heat browns them without drying, leaving a soft centre.
• Keep them in a properly sealed dry tin, where they last two weeks — they absorb moisture from damp air and soften within days otherwise. Rosquillas are made in both Honduras and Nicaragua and the atlas records the shared tradition rather than assigning them to one country.

History

Crisp corn and cheese rings baked in clay ovens and dunked in coffee, a tradition shared with neighbouring Nicaragua.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rosquillas?

Rosquillas is a snack from Honduras: baked corn-and-cheese rings dunked in coffee. Crisp corn and cheese rings baked in clay ovens and dunked in coffee, a tradition shared with neighbouring Nicaragua.

How long does Rosquillas take to make?

Rosquillas takes 40 minutes of preparation and 25 minutes of cooking. The recipe makes about 30 rings. It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Rosquillas?

Yes, within limits. A mild hard dry grating cheese is the nearest substitute for queso seco; parmesan is too strongly flavoured. No substitute is really the same and the atlas gives it plainly rather than pretending they match. Sugar, ground aniseed and grated panela make the sweet version, where the savoury one is cheese and salt only; both are genuinely made.

What is the most important thing to get right in Rosquillas?

Press and smooth the join over. Check each ring before baking. Keep the hole reasonably large. Heat the oven to one hundred and eighty degrees. These must dry out as well as bake. Bake them for about twenty-five minutes. They should be golden and firm. Turn the oven off and leave them in. Give them another fifteen minutes there.