Recipe: Mini Cornflour Alfajor Hearts with Dulce de Leche

The cornflour alfajor is a delicious cookie sandwiches filled with dulce de leche (caramel). The traditional recipe is made with maicena which is cornflour. So the famous alfajores de maicena are cornflour alfajores.

If you’re from Uruguay or Argentina, you can recreate this taste of home. Maybe you’re searching for inspiration to bake something different, or to specifically bake something from South America. And everyone loves these delicious cornflour alfajores.

So like most people in the world right now, we’re stuck at home, looking for things to do to keep kids entertained. We’re also finding that cooking and eating all meals and snacks at home, the same old things quickly become monotonous so we find ourselves searching for new and different things to do and cook. Baking with the children kills two birds with one stone. Not only do we get a delicious treat, but dare I say this classes as homeschooling.. a cooking lesson, bonding time, even a spot of maths?!

Ingredients

150g cornflour
100g plain flour
80g sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
dulce de leche to fill

Method to Make your Cornflour Alfajores

Cream together the butter, sugar and then egg yolks. Then mix in the other dry ingredients and mould together until a dough forms
Chill in the fridge for around 30 minutes. This will firm up the cookie dough as the butter re-solidifies, which helps when shaping the alfajores. Tip: you can make the dough in advance and refrigerate for several days
Roll our your cookie dough to around 1cm thick. Cut out your shape of choice. We happened to have playdough cutters and opted for small hearts to keep the alfajores quite miniature. That made around 20 maizena alfajores.
Bake for 10 minutes at 180C. We noticed the cookies didn’t look much different after baking, maybe slightly browned. But the taste was authentic, and the texture was crumbly so this was correct. Have faith in the timings!
Once cooled, spread dulce de leche on half of the cookies and place the other half on top to create the alfajores – cookie sandwiches
Optional extra. You can roll the sides in dessicated coconut, or even coat entirely in melted chocolate.. Both of these types are typical extra toppings, but we stuck with just dulce de leche to keep things simple