Alejandro and I spent a good portion of New Year's Day making tamales. We were not making ordinary tamales, but a special kind called "tamales canarios" (canary tamales) which get their name from their yellow color. These are sweet tamales rather than savory ones. The ingredients for the dough are quite different than other kinds. For one thing, the dough is not made from corn flour, but rice flour as well as some wheat flour.
The recipe also calls for eggs, something that is not used in other kinds of tamales.
And instead of lard, you use butter... lots of butter. The recipe calls for soft butter at room temperature. Alejandro left the butter sit out overnight. However, the temperature was so chilly the night before, that the butter was still not soft. It took forever for us to cream the butter with sugar.
After finally creaming the butter to a sufficiently soft consistency, the flour and baking powder were added, as well as vanilla, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. To this dough we then added chopped nuts, cranberries and raisins.
The dough was spooned onto corn husks, a piece of cheese was put into the dough, and the corn husk was folded around it.
(I have to admit that I am not very good at making tamales. I did not do a good job on folding the corn husks, and the dough on some of mine leaked out as the tamales were cooking.)
The tamales are then placed in an enormous steamer which is made especially for tamales. Water is added to the container, it is placed on the stove, and the tamales are steamed for over an hour.
The result of our long hours of labor was very tasty. We have been having "tamales canarios" each day for breakfast and for supper.
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