Colombia - Part 2

So we find ourselves on an extended pancake journey in Colombia.  If you recall, we came to the conclusion that our previous arepas did not turn out because we had the wrong masarepa flour.  We returned to Northgate Market to buy a different type of flour, and this is what we bought this time:

Of course, we bought some more corn tortillas while we were there too!  Once again, here are the ingredients for arepas:

2 cups masarepa
2 cups hot water
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of soft butter
50 grams of shredded cheese

In our previous research, we found some recipes that called for putting cheese in the dough, and we decided to add some cheese this time as well.

As before, you'll need to  mix the masarepa, water, salt, cheese, and butter. Knead with your hands for about 3 minutes moistening your hands with water as you work.

Again, divide the dough into 6 small balls.  Once again, I made one big ball, cut it in half, and then cut each half into thirds.

Ack!  Seeing this photo with all of the medications in the background reminds me of what a sick puppy my poor Mac was.  Side note, he's much healthier now, and only on thyroid medication.  Yay!

Once you've divided the dough into 6 balls, you'll need to place one of the balls of dough between two pieces of parchment paper.  Then take a lid and flatten the ball until it's about 1/3" thick.  They should be about 5" in diameter.  We didn't take any pictures of this process this time, but you can look here to get an idea of what they should look like.  We decided to take a different approach to making the arepas this time, as one of the recipes we found called for putting a piece of butter in the pan, and immediately putting the flattened arepa on top.  Then right before flipping the arepa, you put another piece of butter on top before flipping it.  Here's what the process looked like:

Here is what they looked like once they were both flipped.

These are looking a little bit more like the arepas I've eaten in the past, but there was still something off about them.  We decided to give them at try anyway.

Once again, these tasted yummy, but the texture was off.  This time it was a bit better, but the texture still wasn't good enough to make me want to eat the whole thing.  Perhaps we'll have to take a Colombian cooking class sometime so that we can find out what we keep doing wrong when it comes to making arepas.