Señora Rockin'Bauer

Recently, as in yesterday & today, I learned that if you spout off and say that you can & will do something, it's a great motivator for learning how to do that something in the first place.

Case in point:

Last week at Story Time, I told all my preschool buddies that our theme this week would be Hispanic Heritage & that I would make either sopapillas or churros for them to have as a snack. In preparation for today, I lined up a native speaker to read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie en el Español & I pulled several Latino books off the shelf to read this week.

And, I briefly thought about making some kind of deep fried dough.

And, promptly forgot.

Until yesterday. Man FYI'd me on a community-wide brief that went out yesterday promising great fun at Story Time. Come on ¡Vamanos! Everybody, Let's Go . . . we'll be reading in Spanish and Frau will be busting a move on some sopapillas or churros.

Oh, yeah. I said I could do that.

And, I can. Actually, I have. Sorta. But, it was in San Antonio and all I really did was deep fry readily available prepackaged tortilla dough.

No experience, no problemo. Besides, how hard can it be?

I am flexible and adaptable and pretty darn handy in the kitchen. I can rise to any occasion. For Heaven's Sakes, I even have masa harina in my pantry. Only there was a little problemo: my masa harina was the corn flour kind for making tamales. Not that I've ever made those either, but how hard can it be? I had high hopes of whipping some out for Cinco de Mayo, but the commissary wasn't stocking corn husks at the time, and that severely interfered with my tamale plan.

Last night, I experimented & tried deep frying dough made from masa harina de maiz in hopes of the oil magically morphing the dough into perfect sopapillas. It really didn't work that well, not for sopapillas. Man said the dough needed "more sugar" & I decided that my misguided attempt would make the perfect shells for San Antonio style puffy tacos.

So this morning I goggled "sopapilla" & "churros" recipes & decided on the one with that looked the easiest to make. I totally gave up on the idea of making churros right after I learned that you have to boil some of the ingredients to make the dough. Agreed, boiling is not difficult. I just didn't want to go there in a time crunch. Especially not when I needed to fluff up my hair and make-up the face for a public appearance.

Instead, I used this recipe & made sopapillas from scratch. Like I did everything but grind the wheat kind of scratch.

Although it took me a while to get the mojo going & have the dough puff to perfection, I think my kitchen reputation might remain intact. Especially considering I'm a gringa with the last name Rockin'Bauer, not Rodriguez.

You know what else I learned? Tortillas (b/c sopapillas are basically fried tortilla dough) shaped like Texas & Alaska are much easier to make than perfect circle ones and that sopapillas taste best fresh out of the deep fryer and smothered with honey. I also learned that preschoolers don't care about sopapilla shapes & if you don't tell them they taste better hot with honey, they won't think to ask.

Heck, not one kid had ever had them before and several moms didn't even know what they were, especially my Brit Mum friend.

Just another "Duh, you aren't in Texas anymore" brought to you by HausFrau.

Hey, wanna come over for dinner sometime? I can make puffy tacos.

Kinda, sorta. Besides, how hard can it be?