Developing dessert ideas to be enjoyed over the Lenten season is always a bit of a challenge. Other than the conventional items that people give up, others won’t eat butter or leavened bread, some exclude eggs, milk and cream and others simply remove anything sweet from their diet altogether.
For those of you that still want to enjoy a dessert, this is a great idea way for you to get your sweet on without feeling too guilty. All you need is a pack of large flour tortillas, some chocolate custard with or without eggs and some strawberry sauce…that’s it. I chose to use my favorite chocolate pastry cream, but if you prefer to keep it totally vegan, you can use your choice of chocolate custard. I experimented with this recipe twice. The first time, I did not add enough strawberry sauce to the rolled up tortillas, so they did not soften enough to eat easily with a spoon. The next time around, I spread some half cooked strawberry sauce all over the tortilla before adding the custard and rolling them up. I also poured some of the half cooked strawberry sauce into the baking dish, then added the enchiladas, then covered them with some more sauce and allowed them to sit on the counter at room temperature for 15 minutes before baking. This really helped a lot to soften the tortillas, and the dessert was even better the next day. So for your next dessert after a Lenten meal or your Cinco de Mayo celebration, these dessert enchiladas will easily fit the bill…
Dessert Enchiladas
Flour tortillas (I used 10” tortillas)
1 recipe chocolate cream
3 cups half cooked strawberry sauce
The first thing you need to make is the chocolate custard. It is better to make it the day before or earlier in the day to let it completely set up so that you can pipe it out. Ideally, it should be firm like this and it will make it much easier to wrap…
Next make the strawberry sauce and set it aside. My recipe above uses 2 cups of cut up strawberries and ½ cup of sugar plus a little lemon juice that I add to the food processor to make into a puree. Once you puree the strawberries, you will have 1 ½ cups of strawberry puree, so you will need to double this for 4 tortillas. Place the puree into a small pot and cook for about 10-15 minutes, it will start to thicken but you do not want it too thick at this point. Once you pour it over the enchiladas and bake it in the oven, it will continue to thicken. I reserved a little for plating, but you can definitely add all of the sauce to the baking pan if you prefer. Depending on how many tortillas you want to make, simply modify the recipe accordingly. I made a tray of 4 tortillas and used 3 cups of strawberry sauce and approximately 1/3 of the chocolate filling. Once the sauce is halfway cooked, spray your baking dish with your choice of pan spray and pour half of the sauce in the baking dish and set the rest of it aside.
Place one of the flour tortillas on the counter, add a little strawberry sauce and then pipe out the chocolate cream. The second time I made these, I did not have enough time to let the chocolate cream to chill completely, which is why it looks so soft in the following pictures. Ideally, it should look firm as in the picture above. Roll up the flour tortillas with the chocolate filling and place them side by side in the baking dish that has half the strawberry sauce.
Once you have filled up your baking tray with the filled tortillas, pour the rest of the strawberry sauce on top and allow them to sit on the counter for 15 minutes before baking.
Lastly, bake them in a preheated 350°F oven for 20-30 minutes until the strawberry sauce has thickened and is a lovely bubbling, dark red color. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool slightly before serving. You can serve these warm or cold with more strawberry sauce, whipped cream or ice cream.
Leave a Reply