Pristinos con Miel: Dessert from Ecuador

Christmas Dessert

This is the most typical Christmas dessert in Ecuador. You can find it in all homes, even the poorer ones, everybody must have the pristiños in their Christmas table. They are a sort of fried cookies, dipped in honey.

Recipe

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour
1 ½ tablespoon of cooking oil
3 egg yolks
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons butter
¾ cup of milk
Oil enough for frying
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon spice cloves
3 teaspoons cinnamon
3 cups of water
Grinded peel of 1 lemon
3 panelas, (rapaduras) and if not, 1 cup of honey

Preparation of the dough:

Put the flour in a big bowl, add the oil mixed with the milk and the egg yolks, warmed up, over the flour and start kneading it. Add 1 cup of water (warmed also) with the baking powder in it and a ¼ teaspoon of salt, and add this into the flour mixture also. Knead until you get a dough you can easily handle, then let it stand covered for some fifteen minutes. Once this time passed, cut long strips of the dough and make circles holding both ends firmly together
so that they will keep this way, you can add some delicate cuts or marks on top of them. Fry them on very hot oil until they get golden, then put them in a bowl with some kitchen paper towels to absorb the extra oil.

Preparation of the sauce:

Put the two cups of water to boil, add the cinnamon, the spice cloves, the lemon grinded peel, and let this boil for five minutes. Then take the spice cloves out of the water and add the rapaduras, (panelas) or the honey and back to the fire, until this gets reduced to its half. Add the vanilla. Once this is cool, cover the pristiños with this sauce and serve them. Delicious!