Both the bartolillos and the Mona de Pascua are two traditional Easter sweets. Discover how to make them at home with these two delicious typical recipes.
The bartolillos are typical sweets of the Madrid confectionery and are traditional at Easter. These sweets are made with puff pastry and filled with pastry cream. In addition to Madrid, bartolillos are also prepared in other provinces and even with different fillings, such as chocolate and cream.
At the time of serving, they are sprinkled with icing sugar, or also with granulated sugar, and accompanied by a light sugar syrup or a syrup flavored with some liqueur.
The puff pastry used to prepare the bartolillos is the same as that used to make empanadillas. The puff pastry is given a triangular shape or other shapes such as a cone or cornet, in the form of rods or tubes.
Monas de Pascua also stand out , a traditional sweet that is made mainly in Catalonia, and which also stands out for being part of the traditional confectionery typical of Holy Week.
Bartolillos recipe
Ingredients for the bartolillos:
- Puff pastry sheets.
- Sunflower oil or extra virgin olive oil with a mild flavor.
- Icing sugar for dusting or granulated white sugar.
Ingredients for the pastry cream:
- Half a liter of whole or skimmed milk.
- 3 egg yolks.
- 45 grams of cornstarch.
- 4 tablespoons of cold mineral water.
- 160 grams of white sugar.
- The skin of a lemon.
- Vanilla essence, a few drops.
Preparation of the pastry cream:
We put the milk to the fire to heat in a heater with the skin of the lemon.
Put the cornstarch in a bowl and melt it with the water, add the well-beaten egg yolks and stir to mix well.
Once the milk begins to boil, we extract the lemon skin, add the sugar, the drops of vanilla essence, stir and add it to the mixture before the yolks.
We put everything together to cook stirring without stopping and once it starts to boil we remove it from the fire.
Let the pastry cream cool and reserve it to make the bartolillos.
Elaboration of the bartolillos:
Spread the puff pastry well with the help of a rolling pin. To shape the bartolillos we will use a triangular mold.
Make the triangles, take one of the triangles and put a spoonful of pastry cream in the center, then put another triangle on top and close the sides, sealing them well by pressing with the tines of a fork so that when you fry them the pastry cream does not come out. We repeat the same until we have all the bartolillos ready to fry.
In a frying pan, heat the oil over medium heat, and once it is hot, fry the bartolillos, browning them on both sides.
Prepare a plate or tray with absorbent paper to put the bartolillos on top and drain the oil. Let the bartolillos cool and when presenting them, sprinkle them with icing sugar.
Mona de Pascua: traditional recipe
The Mona de Pascua is a typical dessert in the regions of Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon and the Balearic Islands. It is a traditional sweet at Easter and the tradition of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands is to make it and taste it on Easter Monday.
The Mona de Pascua keeps a tradition and that is that the godparents give their godchildren this sweet on Easter Sunday and the next day, Easter Monday, the family gathers and spends a day in the field to taste the Mona de Pascua together.
The dough with which this sweet is made is a dough like the one used to make the roscón de Reyes, it is given various shapes and then it is decorated with eggs that can be chocolate or boiled eggs and painted in various colors. In the regions of Murcia and Aragón, Monas are made throughout the year.
The recipe to prepare the Mona de Pascua is very easy and if we have children at home we can spend a fun afternoon with them preparing a Mona de Pascua.
Ingredients:
- 500 grams of wheat flour.
- 250ml whole or skimmed milk.
- 25 grams of dry yeast.
- 3 eggs.
- 85 grams of white sugar.
- 100 grams of unsalted butter.
- A pinch of salt.
- 4 tablespoons of orange blossom water.
- The zest of an orange peel.
Ingredients for decoration:
- An egg yolk to shine the monkey.
- Chocolate eggs or boiled eggs painted with food coloring.
- Colored noodles, chocolate, aniseed balls or sugar pearls.
Elaboration:
Sift the flour, put it in a bowl and add the yeast, the orange blossom water, the grated orange peel, and mix well.
Beat the eggs well, add the sugar, melted butter, salt and stir well again. Knead until the dough has a compact texture, and we form a ball.
Moisten a cloth with water to wrap the dough and reserve in the refrigerator for about 5 hours so that it rests and increases in size.
We extract the dough from the refrigerator, spread it out and form the Mona, in the way that we like the most, in the form of a donut, braided, in the shape of an animal.
We brush the mona with a beaten egg and put the colored noodles, the aniseed balls or pearls or any other decoration that we have chosen to decorate it.
On the oven tray we place baking paper to cook the Mona. Preheat the oven to a temperature of 200º C for 15 minutes. We cook the Mona at a temperature of 120º C for approximately 40 minutes. Remove the Mona from the oven and let it cool. Once cold, we complete the decoration with the chocolate eggs or the painted boiled eggs.
