Travelling Kitchen: Flowers from Extremadura

Flores or floretas are a very typical dessert in the Spanish regions of Castilla la Mancha and Extremadura.

It is a fried dough in the shape of a flower, done with the help of a special mold, they are usually sprinkled with sugar or bathed in honey, it depends on the area.

There is also a similar dessert in Colombia called "solteritas" and in Mexico they also make something similar.

In Extremadura, most of the recipes I have seen have been made with honey, this is the recipe I present today, you have to use a good honey and the flavor is spectacular, much better than with sugar.

Ingredients:

- 3 eggs.

- 220 g flour.

- 300 ml whole milk.

- a tablespoon of anisseed.

- Lemon zest.

- Honey.

Method:

1- Infuse the milk with lemon zest and aniseed. To do this, pour the milk into a saucepan along with the lemonzest and aniseed, put it over medium heat until it starts to boil, and then take away from the heat and wait for it to get cold.

2- Once the milk is cold, strain the milk.

3- To make the dough, put the eggs in a bowl along with the flour and then add the milk step by step and mix well each time you add the milk. You can also add water when the milk runs out and the dough still does not have a good consistency. just as you see in the photos. Keep in mind that the dough does not contain sugar.

4- We look for a frying pan or casserole where the flower mold fits well, fill the frying pan with oil. Heat the oil.

5- We put the mold in the dough being careful to leave part of the mold outside the dough. Then put the mold in the frying pan, you will immediately see that the dough can come off the mold easily and we let the flower brown a little more.Then you take the flower out of the oil and put it to dry on an absorvent paper, put the flowers upside down so that the oil does not remain in the folds of the flower.

6- We put the honey in a casserole and turn on the heat until the honey becomes liquid, then you turn off the heat and put half of each flower in the honey, put them face down in the honey and then put them in a dish face up so that the honey stays in the folds of the flower.