Tortilla Shells

To complement today's post, here is the recipe I came up with for tortilla shells, this recipe will work for whole wheat (preferred) or white. I find that the white is best for doing a sweat treat, I'll put the treat at the end of the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 Cup Flour (Whole Wheat is best IMHO)
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt
4.5 teaspoons Oil (Equivalent to 1.5 Tablespoons, I use Canola oil)
1/2 cup flour
Up to about 2 Tablespoons extra flour to remove stickyness of dough

Instructions:
Put a skillet on the stove and turn the heat to medium. Mix the dry ingredients together, the better you mix them the better the shells turn out, I like to use our stand mixer to make these. Add your oil and mix, you will have flour and oil chunks in your mixture, you don't have to break them up a lot but try your best to get them spread throughout. Add the water and continue mixing/stirring until all the flour is into the dough. At this point you can handle the dough by hand, though it might stick a bit, I put some flour down on my work surface and kneed it in until the dough stops sticking so much. The dough should be light, similar in feel to Playdough though it won't keep its shape if you form it. Separate the dough into 4 equal pieces and shape into tortillas, some people say never use a rolling pin, however this is the easiest way I've found and produces nice, even shells. Roll it out into the desired thickness and shape. Cook shells about 30-60 seconds per side on the hot skillet, you will have to experiment with cooking time for your stove and desired doneness of the shells. That's it! You should have 4 medium sized tortilla shells, if you want more you can double, triple, etc the batch. My biggest batch was 4x, any more than this and I start to ache from standing and rolling the shells out.

Other Uses:
Dessert:
You will need a pie pan instead of the skillet, instead of cooking on the stove you will cook it in the oven, 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Use white flour, make your dough, spray the pie pan to keep the dessert from sticking. Spread the dough in the pan as evenly as you can, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Cook for 15 minutes or so and that's it, you'll have a sweet treat that's good for dessert.

Whole Wheat Tortilla Chips:
These things are fantastic, my newest addiction for chips and with so much less salt! Follow the above directions for making tortilla shells except this time after you split the dough into 4 pieces you will need to split each piece into 4 more pieces, roll out these 16 pieces of dough into very small tortilla shells and cook them like you should the normal shells. When they are all cooked preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut your mini shells into quarters and spread out on a pan, I use a cookie sheet. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, chips should just start to brown and should be crispy, let them cool on the pan (this will help finish the cooking process without burning them), when they are done cooling you can store them or enjoy them right away. I have no idea how long they'll store, so just keep your eye on them and don't keep them for too long.