Cote d' Ivoire, we'd love to try your pancakes . . .but on to Cuba we must go

Alright, we bought the plantains we needed for pancakes from Cote d' Ivoire.  We then proceeded to wait a few weeks for them to ripen up.  Well, when they were finally ripe enough to use, we didn't have the time to make pancakes.  This led to them becoming over ripe.

We tried finding more plantains that were ripe enough to use, but had no luck.  I did find some that were close, and I will be monitoring them at the grocery store for purchase next week.  Maybe we'll get to make pancakes from Cote d' Ivoire then.  For now though, we head to the island nation of Cuba, where arepas are the pancake of choice.

When researching Cuban pancakes, we discovered that their pancakes are really more like a pancake sandwich.  They take two arepas and melt cheese in between.  It sounds an awful lot like a grilled cheese sandwich to me!  I hope it tastes as good as a grilled cheese sandwich!  Anyway, here is what you'll need to make Cuban arepas.

1 cup of milk
5 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of arepa flour (aka masa arepa)
1 cup of frozen corn, ground
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of sugar
1 cup of mozarella
1/2 cup of water (you might not need this at all)
6-8 slices of mild Swiss cheese, sliced

The first thing you'll need to do to make Cuban arepas is bring your milk to a boil on the stove.

Once the milk is boiling, turn off the heat and add the 5 tablespoons of butter to the hot milk. I chopped the butter into smaller pieces so that it would melt easier.

Stir the butter and milk until the butter is melted, then set aside.  Now take your frozen corn and put it in a food processor or blender.  Run until coarsely ground.

After grinding the frozen corn, finely grate the mozzarella cheese.

Now you're ready to begin mixing ingredients together.  First mix together everything except for the milk/butter mixture and the water.

Once everything is mixed together, make a well in the center and add the milk/butter mixture.

Now mix it all together until everything is moist and begins to form a smooth, sticky dough.

Now we found that it wasn't necessary to add the water because we had a pretty wet dough that was not rollable.  Instead, we added a little bit more arepa flour to get the dough to a slightly more rollable consistency.  It will should still be smooth and sticky though.  Once you get the dough to that point (by either adding water or more arepa flour), place some of the dough on a piece of wax paper and cover it with another piece of wax paper.

Roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch thick.

Next cut out circles that are about 3 inches in diameter.

Heat some butter on a griddle.

Once the butter has melted and is evenly distributed, carefully lift the cut our arepa from the work surface and place it on the hot griddle.

Flip and cook on the other side for another 2-3 minutes.  Somehow we missed a picture of the already flipped arepas.  I think Sam might have been distracted at this point in time and missed the shot.  You'll get to see what they should look like in just a moment.

Continue rolling, cutting, and cooking until all of the dough has been used.  Once the dough has been used.  Place a slice of cheese between two arepas.  Place a little more butter on the griddle and cook until cheese is melted.

Here is the end product.

I must say I had my doubts about these considering all of the problems we had when we tried making Colombian arepas.  However, these were delish!