El Dia de Los Tres Reyes Magos~ Champurrado Recipe

El Dia de los Tres Reyes Magos

This is a celebration held 12 days after Christmas, January 6th. On January 5th children put their shoes under their beds and fill them with grass for the camels of the Tres Magos (Three Wise Men). In the morning when they wake up their shoes are filled with candies. They are also given a small gift or two.
This is a day to commemorate the Tres Reyes Magos who visit Baby Jesus and bring him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In celebration a gathering is held and all those invited are served a piece of a pastry known as the Rosca de Reyes. Inside the Rosca there is a small plastic baby (for safety reasons most stores no longer sell it with the baby baked inside.) and whoever gets the piece with the baby inside is supposed to host guests at their house on Feb 2 and serve Champurrado and Tamales. The baby is baked inside to symbolize the need to hide Baby Jesus from the decree sent out by King Herod, to kill all new born babies because he had been told the messiah had been born.

Rosca de Reyes~ See the plastic baby is on the outside now.

Champurrado Classico~ 8 cups milk, 1 cup water 1 cone piloncillo, 1 star of star anise, 2 tablets of chocolate, 2 cinnamon sticks, 3 tablespoons of  harina de maiz . If you like a thicker consistency and a stronger corn flavor, add an extra tablespoon of harina de maiz at a time and mix in thoroughly. I thought it came out supersweet, so you may want to **omit the pilloncillo** I knew it was gonna be sweet, but I followed the recipe!

 8 cups of milk and immediatley whisk in the harina de masa. 

 



Add chocolate and piloncillo.** I won't put piloncillo next time**, the chocolate made it sweet enough for my taste.

It took forever for the pilloncillo to melt! But this is the color it looked when I was done. I added another 3 tablespoons of masa de harina.
 

So that is the classic recipe for Champurrado also known as Atole. There are many versions! You can use the same ingredients and just swap the harina de masa with the same amount of cornstarch, which thickens the chocolate without giving the corn flavor. Or, you can get the same amount of milk and get a sleeve of the Maria cookies and break them up into desired size and add that to your milk AFTER you bring it to a boil along with the other ingredients listed, let the cookies just sit in the mixture and they will absorb all goodness. Last way I know of is to pulverize that sleeve of cookies and add that as your milk thickener......THIS IS WHY I LOVE COOKING, THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY OR WRONG WAY! THE RIGHT WAY IS ALWAYS THE WAY YOU LIKE IT! So, if it's too sweet, add more milk, not sweet enough, mas chocolate!