Alfajores de maizena

I'm pooped. Just got back from a party. Didn't stay long, but long enough to get a little tipsy, i suppose. It was the birthday of a friend of Quade's. Kristi or something like that. They'd taken over the laundry room, so there we were, squeezed in among the machines, shoving each other and trying to talk over the music, the whirr of the dryers and the slushing of water in the washers.

Anyway, i've spent most of the day trying to make alfajores de maicena. My mom used to make them for all our birthdays when we were kids, and i thought i'd kill two birds with one stone: make some for the party tonight, and some for this other gathering there is on Monday, to celebrate the end of the norwegian course.

This is the recipe:

100 g. butter
150 g. sugar
2 egg yolks
1 egg white
grated lemon peel (half a lemon)
150 g. corn starch (maizena)
60 g. flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
250 g. de dulce de leche
3 tablespoons grated coconut

You basically beat the butter together with the sugar till you get a creamy mix. Then add the yolks, egg white and lemon peel, beating all the while. Sift in the starch, flour and baking powder, mix, and then start kneading with your hands until you have a nice, homogenous dough. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Then you sprinkle some flour on the table and stretch the dough over it with a rolling pin, till it's about 1/2 cm thick. Cut out circles with a drinking glass (you pick the size; just make sure they're all the same, and that you end up with an even number of circles).

Place these "cookies" on a baking sheet (don't forget the baking paper beneath), and give them 15 minutes at medium heat. You should take them out just as they begin to change color. Let them cool before you peel them off the sheet; otherwise they might break easily.

Make a 'sandwich' with two cookies, by spreading dulce de leche (Hapå, if you're in Norway; don't use too much!) on the flat side of one, and then sticking it to the flat side of another. Some of the dulce de leche will come out on the sides; that's all right. Now roll the cookies around in the coconut and it will stick to the edges, and voilá! Alfajores de maizena.

I hadn't made these in a long time. Had to consult with my mom to check that i remembered the recipe right. Plus, it took me a while, because i multiplied by five (otherwise would have gotten some 20 alfajores; way too few!). Tja... They turned out ok, but it was more fun to watch my mom make them. The excitement! To eat bits of the raw dough, spoon out the last of the dulce de leche from its jar, get up at siesta time, in the heat, and tiptoe to the kitchen to steel a couple of freshly made alfajores from the fridge...