So this might be a little bit of an unusual recipe for me, but I actually love the South American and Spanish kitchen. It also helps that my boyfriend grew up in Spain and always introduces me to these new delicious dishes and sweets, like tortas de aceite, I otherwise would have never heard of. He used to eat this a lot, but never actually made them himself. He thought it would be a looot of work. I couldn’t help myself and was dying to experiment a little bit with these. We were both suprised as it turned out they were actually really easy to make!
Tortas de aceite or olive oil tortas are just amazing in their flavour, which is to me very unique and not like any other biscuits you might know. You can eat them with savoury, but also with sweet. I normally eat them with some honey or just some icing sugar on top… delicious. I just love these tortas because you can go both ways with them!
It also doesn’t help me that I am a huge fan of aniseed. Normally you might be stumbling upon recipes that use a lot less aniseed, but I am just in love with them and people in love do crazy things. That is why these are packed with them and why they taste so good.
Also this was an amazing opportunity for me to finally try me new Silpat! This was for some time on my wishlist and am so excited about it. I always love to reduce my waste, so this was a logical step for me as I can only buy bleached baking paper here! You don’t need to grease it or anything, it is just ready to go and after you used it you simple give it a quick rinse with a sponge and some water. This was the first time using it for me, but my tortas turned out great, so a great addition for my dream kitchen.
Hopefully you guys love these as much as I do and give them a try.
Ingredients
So for these tortas de aceite you will need:
- 250g to 310g | 2 to 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour or “00” flour (I also used wholemeal flour once, which turned out quite good, but not as good as with regular or cake flour)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 tbsp anise seeds or fennel seeds, reduce this amount to 1 tbsp if you don’t share the same love for anise flavour.
- 160ml | 2/3 cup warm water
- 120ml | 1/2 cup olive oil
- 4 tbsp raw sugar or maple syrup, also some sugar for sprinkling
- 1 tbsp of active dry or instant yeast
- 1 egg white, beaten
- icing sugar for dusting
Directions
- Preheat your oven at 220°C or 430°F.
- Yeast mixture: Add the sugar and the yeast to the warm water and give it a good stir. Set aside for a few minutes until frothy.
- Mix dry ingredients: Mix the flour (start with 2 cups) with the salt and anise seeds in a large bowl.
- oil, oil, oil: Add the olive oil to your yeast mixture and mix this slowly in the bowl with your dry ingredients until a smooth dough forms. Add the rest of the flour if your dough seems too wet.
- Prepare las tortas: divide your dough in 16 pieces and make little balls from them. Get a rolling pin and roll each ball out until you can almost see a little bit through it, approximately 10cm or 4 inched in diameter. Place them on 2 lined baking trays. Optional: dust the baking trays with some icing sugar before you place the tortas. My baking trays only fitted 6 of the tortas each, so I needed to go for a second round with the last tortas in the oven.
- Bake: Lightly brush the tortas with the beaten egg white and sprinkle some icing sugar and raw sugar on top. Now place the baking trays in the oven for 6 to 12 minutes (mine were perfect at 8 minutes in, but they can burn in seconds, so keep an eye on them)
- Once they look nice golden brown, get them out of the oven and transfer them to a wire rack. Enjoy them with some honey like me, some cheese, or even just like that.
Enjoy!
If you actually know if you are going for sweet, you can try these white chocolate and coconut blondies… yummm but hey otherwise just enjoy these seriously good tortas de aceite… nom
Welcome to my tiny kitchen! I am Ismay, my love for food began small, but it soon became an undeniable obsession with way too much hours watching food videos, tastings and covered in flour.