Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! I'll be celebrating tonight with a fiesta at the Everything Food Conference in Salt Lake City. Since it's Cinco de Mayo, I thought that it would be fun to share another vegan concha recipe with you. You have been loving my original concha recipe and I love seeing photos of your beautiful conchas on Instagram!
Hector has been asking for me to make my concha recipe for weeks now. I knew that it had been awhile since I made a batch of my vegan conchas. I wanted to change up my original recipe. Traditional Mexican conchas come in a wide range of sugar toppings, including chocolate. I thought that it might be fun to switch of my classic sugar topping and make a vegan chocolate sugar topping.
The sweet bread part of this recipe is the same as my original recipe. Only the recipe for the sugar topping is different. I have added Dutch processed baking coco powder to the sugar topping.
These Conchas are perfect anytime of day. Serve these at breakfast with a cup of coffee or for an afternoon treat. If you are a fan of sweet breads and chocolate, you are going to love this recipe! Be sure to tag your photo at #thymeandlove on Instagram so we can see!
Vegan Mexican Chocolate Conchas
A classic Mexican Pan Dulce recipe for Conchas with a Vegan twist. Perfect for serving for breakfast with a cup of coffee.
Ingredients
- ⅔ Cup Warm Water
- 1 Tablespoon Active Dry Yeast
- ½ Cup Soy Milk, lukewarm
- 2 teaspoon Apple Cider Vinegar
- ⅓ Cup Vegan Butter like Earth Balance, room temperature
- ⅓ Cup Sugar
- 3 ½ Cups All Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Salt
For the sugar topping:
- ⅓ Cup Sugar
- ¼ Cup Vegetable shortening
- ½ Cup All Purpose Flour
- 3 Tablespoons Coco Powder
- 1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract, preferably Mexican Vanilla
Instructions
- In a large mixing bow, combine the water and yeast. Let proof for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile in a measuring cup, pour in the soy milk and apple cider vinegar. Let sit for 5 minutes as well.
- Once the yeast has proofed, add the soy milk mixture, Earth Balance, sugar, 2 Cups of the flour and salt. Carefully mix everything together. Gradually add in the remaining 1 ½ cups flour. Once all the ingredients have been incorporated, knead the dough with your hands until it comes together and is smooth elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place the bread in a large greased bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm location. I always look for the warmest location in the house and place the dough there. Let the bread rise until it has doubled in size, about 1 ½ hours.
- After the dough has doubled in size, punch down the dough with your hands. Knead the dough for another minute or two. Divided the dough into 12 equal sized balls. Knead each ball for a minute or two. Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Cover them with a kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the sugar topping. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the sugar, vegetable shortening, flour, coco powder and vanilla. Mix with your hands until a thick dough forms. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 375 F.
- Once the conchas have risen for the 30 minutes, take the sugar topping and divide into 12 equal balls. You should have just enough to cover each of the conchas.
- Take two sheet of plastic wrap, and one at a time place a ball of the sugar topping between the two plastic sheets and press down with your hands until it is large enough to cover the top of concha. Place on top of a concha and continue until all 12 are done.
- Take a sharp knife and cut slits into the sugar topping to create the shell look. Be careful not to cut all the way through the dough. Just lightly cut into the sugar topping. I usually do about 4-5 cuts.
- Cover and let rise for another 20 minutes.
- Place the conchas at least 2 inches on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Just incase they spread too much. I like to bake 6 conchas per baking sheet.
- Bake in the oven for 14-16 minutes, or until the bottoms are lightly browned.
- Serve and enjoy!
XO Jeni
Jojo
Those look seriously good!
Octavia Mamuasa
Can you sub the vegan butter for coconut oil?
Jeni
You should be able to use vegan butter!