Olla de Barro Coffee Conchas Recipe

Welcome to this unique twist on classic Mexican Conchas! In this tutorial, we’ll be making Olla de Barro inspired conchas with a delicious coffee flavor. I’ll show you an easy way to add coffee flavor to your concha dough and how to get that traditional Olla de Barro design using a pipeable concha paste. Let’s get started!

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What are Ollas de Barro?

“Ollas de barro,” or clay pots, are traditional cooking pots made from fired clay with geometric patterns, swirls, dots, flowers, leaves, or animal designs. The designs are typically hand-painted onto the surface of the pots. I have always been amazed with the designs on Ollas de Barro and I thought pairing the beautiful designs with conchas was a perfect combination!

Ollas de Barro are not just for cooking. Take Castillos de Flores, for example, a small local business who makes beautiful flower arrangements using ollas as the vase. Another local example is Luz y Tierra who uses them to make gorgeous and aromatic candles.

Check them out on Instagram to see their beautiful work!

Castillo De Flores

Luz y Tierra

To Make These Olla de Barro Coffee Conchas You'll Need:

I’ve created a Walmart collection that includes majority of the needed ingredients needed for this recipe.

Most of the equipment that I use to make my conchas, such as my concha stamp, I’ve purchased on Amazon.

How to Add Coffee Flavor to Your Conchas?

Only a small amount of instant coffee is needed to get a subtle coffee flavor for the conchas. Since I am a little caffeine sensitive I used instant decaf coffee but feel free to use regular instant coffee or even espresso powder.

You’ll begin the recipe by preparing your concha dough and topping as usual. To infuse it with coffee flavor, add a small amount of instant coffee to the dry ingredients and dissolve some instant coffee in the warm milk. This will give the dough a subtle coffee taste. If you want a stronger coffee flavor, try substituting the milk for brewed coffee.

Add coffee flavor to the topping by mixing the instant coffee or espresso powder with the dry ingredients and butter.

Prepare the Coffee Flavored Dough

In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients, instant coffee, and butter. Add eggs, vanilla extract, and coffee infused milk. Mix until the dough comes together.
Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place for 1.5-2 hours until doubled in size.

Make the Coffee Flavored Concha Topping

Cream together butter and the dry ingredients, including the instant coffee and food coloring until smooth. I added orange food coloring and a small amount of cocoa powder to get a burnt orange color. I used Master Elite “Orange” by The Sugar Art . Use code dayalatreats at checkout for 10% off your purchase.

Shape the Dough and Assemble the Conchas

Once the dough has doubled, divide it into 12 equal portions. Roll each portion into a ball and place on a baking sheet coated with butter.
Coat the top of the each dough ball with butter, place the flattened concha topping on it and flatten slightly with your palm.
Score the topping with a bread stamp or with a knife and allow to rise for about 1 hour.

How to Make Pipeable Concha Paste?

Pipeable concha paste is perfect for adding designs to conchas in a neat and decorative way. You can experiment with different colors and piping designs to create beautiful and delicious conchas.

To make this concha paste you’ll need equal parts vegetable shortening, powdered sugar, and all purpose flour. In this recipe I added a little bit of cocoa powder, cinnamon powder, and vanilla for flavor and to get a tan color. To dilute the concha paste to a pipeable consistency I used a little bit of vegetable oil.

Making the Pipeable Concha Paste and Decorating

In a mixing bowl, cream together the vegetable shortening and dry ingredients until a paste forms. I started with a hand mixer for this but realized that it was much easier to combine the ingredients by hand. I switched back to the hand mixer when I added the oil.
I added 1 1/2 tsp of oil to my concha paste. I knew I had my desired consistency by grabbing some paste on a spatula and pressing it against the side of the bowl. It spread evenly and smoothly.
Transfer the paste to a tipless piping bag.
After the assembled conchas have rested for an hour start making the Olla de Barro designs on them.
I went with flowers but you can get super creative with the designs! For the center of my flowers I used left over black topping.
You can divide the concha paste into however many colors you’d like to use.

Baking & Enjoying

Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C).
Bake the conchas for 18-20 minutes or until the bottoms golden brown. Allow them to cool on a wire rack before serving.
Enjoy these Olla de Barro inspired coffee flavored conchas with a cup of Mexican hot chocolate or a steaming cup of coffee.

These will be perfect for Mother’s Day coming up!

Pipeable Concha Paste Alternatives

If you don’t want to use this concha paste you can add decorations to your conchas post bake using chocolate or royal icing. Wait until the conchas have cooled down before adding any decorations post bake.

Check Out my Other Concha Posts

Mini Conchitas

Frog Conchitas

Strawberry Shaped Conchas

Olla de Barro Coffee Conchas Recipe

Course: DessertCuisine: Mexican

Servings

conchas

Prep time

hour

Resting Time

3.5

hours

Baking Time

minutes

These Olla de Barro inspired conchas are a unique twist on the classic Mexican sweet bread. Soft, light, a subtle coffee flavor, and beautifully decorated with pipeable concha paste makes these conchas hard to resist!

Ingredients

Concha dough
250g Bread flour
63g Granulated Sugar
4g Instant dry yeast
2g Salt
1/4 tsp Cinnamon powder(optional)
1 tsp Instant ground coffee (1/2 tsp for the dry ingredients and 1/2 tsp for the milk)
58g Butter (room temperature)
50ml Eggs(room temperature)
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
75ml Milk (warm)
Concha Topping
65g Butter
70g AP flour
70g Granulated Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
Powdered Food Coloring
1/2 tsp Cocoa powder(optional)
1/2 tsp Instant ground coffee
Pipeable Concha Paste
30g Vegetable shortening
30g All Purpose flour
30g Powdered sugar
1/4 tsp Cinnamon powder(optional)
1/2 tsp Cocoa powder(optional)
1 1/2 tsp Vegetable oil

Directions

Dough
Weight out all needed ingredients and prepare all needed materials.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook at the lowest speed, mix the bread flour, sugar, yeast, salt, cinnamon powder, instant ground coffee, and butter. Combine until the butter fully coats the dry ingredients.
Add the egg and vanilla and combine until incorporated, about 3 minutes.
Warm the milk and dissolve the instant ground coffee. Gradually add the coffee infused milk to the dough mixing in between each addition.
Knead the dough until it starts coming off the sides of the bowl. About 3-4 minutes.
Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover. Let rise for 1-2 hours.
Topping
In the same bowl where the dough was prepared, combine the all purpose flour, sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon powder, instant ground coffee, vanilla extract, food coloring, and butter.
Mix using a paddle attachment at the lowest speed. Mix until the ingredients come together to make a paste resembling Play Doh. Cover and chill until ready to use.
Pipeable Concha Paste
Cream together the vegetable shortening, all purpose flour, powdered sugar, cinnamon powder, cocoa powder, and vanilla with a hand mixer or your hand. Combine until a smooth paste forms.
Add the vegetable oil and mix to form a smoother, more spreadable paste. Press some of the paste agains the side of the bowl using a spatula. It should glide effortlessly.
Transfer the paste into a tip-less piping bag and set to the side until ready to use.
Assembly
After the dough has doubled in size, divide it into 12 equal portions. At this time, take the topping out of the fridge.
Roll each portion in a ball and place them on a sheet tray coated in butter. Coat the top of each dough ball with butter so that the topping sticks.
Divide the topping into 12 equal parts. If the topping is too firm after being in the fridge don’t worry, the warmth of your hands will soften it.
Using a tortilla press or your hands flatten each piece of topping and place it on top of the dough. As you place it on the dough gently press down.
Score the topping using a concha stamp or with a knife.
Allow to rise for an hour. *This is to allow the topping to spread a bit before we add the designs. This reduces the breakage of the designs during baking.
Decorating & Baking
Pipe your desired designs onto the conchas. They will spread a bit in the oven so try to make the designs close together.
Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Bake for 18-20 minutes.
Let the conchas cool down before serving.
Store the conchas in an airtight container. If sealed correctly they stay soft up to 5 days.
These are perfect for cafe y conchas con mamá!

Making Coffee Conchas with a Pipeable Concha Paste Design

Notes

Cover left over pipeable paste and leave at room temperature or use for another concha bake. Check the expiration date of your ingredients and discard at the date of whichever ingredient expires first.
Typically when I decorate my conchas I individually add every detail by hand using my standard concha topping recipe. If I would've done that for these conchas they would have taken me forever to finish. So this pipeable concha paste was a huge time saver!
I've made this pipeable paste before but had not shared it because I thought I did something wrong since it didn't dry after baking. I wrapped up the conchas in a cellophane bag and the piping paste went everywhere. Zulma, a fellow baker, chatted with me on Instagram and told me that she too has that happen with pipeable concha paste. Since then I accepted that the downside of pipeable concha paste is that it doesn't dry, and the designs will mess up if wrapped in bags.