Dominican Arepa

This arepa is a recipe from the Dominican Republic, where my mother is from, so that I grew up with it and now am sharing it with you. It is a delicious mix between bread pudding and corn bread. Recipe contains affiliate links

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Ingredients

Tea Infusion

3/4 cup water
3 sticks cinnamon sticks
2 cloves
1 lime zest skin see notes*

Arepa

1 can coconut milk (equals 2 cups) see notes*
1 can evaporated milk (equals 1 1/3 cup)
2 cups cow milk -full fat
2 cups fine cornmeal
1 1/4-1.5 cup sugar see notes*
3 tbsp salted butter see notes*
1 cup shredded sweet (coconut optional) see notes*

Instructions

preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter your pan. I used a 10x3 baking pan
Bring all tea ingredients to a small pot. Bring the water to a bil. Turn off, remove pot from heat and let tea infusion rest while you prepare the rest of the ingredients
in a large pot, while heat is off, add the milks, cornmeal, sugar, stir very well until you remove all lumps from cornmeal
turn on the heat to medium and stir
add the butter and stir
as soon as it begins to thicken up add the infused tea and stir
you want a thick consistency, not so thick that the mix stays on the spoon when you pick it up. You want it to be thick and still drop back to the pot. The thicker the mix, the harder the arepa bakes, so you want a softer arepa.
once it reaches a thick consistency, turn off heat and add the shredded coconut and stir
immediately spoon or pour the mix into your baking pan.
bake for 30-40 min until top is light golden
take out oven and let it cool completely before removing the arepa from the pan

Notes

lime- you can zest the lime directly into the cornmeal mix or you can infuse the skin in a tea like I did. Adding the zest to the cornmeal does give it a stronger lime flavor, still delicious though!

Milks- you need about 5.5 to 6 cups of milks total. Whatever milks you use. It can be a combination of all 3 milks or just use cow milk. You can also just use evaporated milk. Recipe shows that one can of coconut milk has roughly 2 cups and one can of evaporate milk has roughly 1 1/3 cup. For this recipe, I used one can of coconut milk and 2 cans of evaporated milk.

Butter- I used salted butter so that I didn't add additional salt. If you have unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt.

Sugar- if not adding sweetened shredded coconut, add 1/4 cup more of sugar, for a total of 1.5 cups of sugar.

Sweetened shredded coconut if optional. you can omit or add raisins in place of the coconut.