Orsi Juhasz

Does it ever happen to you that you see a recipe in a book (obviously, with a picture) and you think to yourself: “Oh my, this looks easy, fun and delicious!!!”? I recently did… and the most interesting thing about it? The recipe turned out to be easy, fun and… mind blowing delicious!!!

So, I was looking through a book with cookies the other day and found a recipe (“Apricot raspberry rugelash”) that sounded easy to put together, not to sweet, and yet very Christmasy in flavors. So I tried it… But since the recipe made 96 little rugelashes… Well, I had to cut down on the measurement… Add to that not reading the original recipe to the end, so I came up with yet another amazing recipe “of my own” )

The main ingredients for the dough:

65 g butter (1/2 stick); 56 g cream cheese; 40 g sugar; 80 g flour

For the filling

1/2 cup raspberry jam; 1/4 cup orange marmelade; 1/2 cup chopped walnuts; 1/2 tsp cinnamon; 2 cloves

For the dough mix the butter and the bread cheese together… It really helps if the butter is slightly softened, or at least at room temperature. Once well blended, add the sugar and finally the flour. It should come together rather easily and quickly. You should end up with a very soft rough, that you can form into a ball, and does not stick to your hands anymore (slight cream cheese-like remains on the fingers after touching the dough is permitted). Form two discs from the dough, and wrap them, separately, in plastic wrap. Then in the fridge they go, for about 1 hour or so.

The original recipe also called for vanilla extract and a pinch of salt in the dough but those got, somehow, left behind in my version…

So, moving on to the filling… The recipe had all these awesome ingredients in their filling recipe, such as dried apricots, brown sugar, seedless raspberry preserve, that got me thinking about a very specific way of putting these together. Why read the recipe, who cares about it anyway, right?! Wrong… I mean, let’s suffice with saying that my way was not the same as the one described in the original recipe… But it turned out really well, so this time I won’t have to apologize to those who will get the honor of  tasting these little yumnesses!!!

So, for the filling I mixed everything together in a saucepan, and simmered it for about 10-15 minutes. I was hoping for it to get a bit thicker, but I’m guessing the preserves / jams were already as thick as it gets. So off the stove it came, and into a cold place (I have several of those in my house during the winter time…) until it was lukewarm / cold to the touch.

Once the dough chilled for 1 h, and the filling was cold enough for my liking, I took out both the discs from the fridge, and on a  well floured surface I rolled them out to about 2 mm thick disc. I think… But go with whatever thickness you like. However, try to keep the disc shape, since that will be helpful with cutting out the rugelashes.

Once you have your flat disc, take half of your filling, and spread it out on the top of the disc. I started with using a spoon, but after two attempts at tearing the dough I just switched to my hands. And yes, I greatly enjoyed playing with the lukewarm filling with the big chunks of orange peal and walnuts! Try to spear out everything evenly, however, the big bits should not be in the exact center of the disc. Oh, and don’t forget to remove the two cloves from the filling!!!

Then, what you do is but your disc, as if it was a pizza. First in half, then half the halves, and then half the quarters. This way you will end up with 16 marvelous rugelashes from my recipe. (Interestingly, I divided the original recipe by 8 and ended up with 16, instead of 96/8 = 12… oh well).

Once your disc is cut up nicely, roll up each slice individually, starting from the edge of the disc, and working your way towards the middle of it. Once rolled up, make sure that the tip of the “pizza slice” is on the top of the roll – this will make it look zoo much nicer once they are done!

Rugelashes go on a baking sheet (greased or with parchment / baking / wax paper). Original recipe calls for 45 minutes in a 150C over, but it took mine barely 30 minutes, before they got nice brown on the top.

Now don’t get scared… The filling started flowing out of my rugelashes, and basically the backing sheet was a thin layer of bubbling jam with rugelashes baking in it. I got a bit worried… what if all of it came out, and I will have some boring little cookies now? But worry not, the cookies turned out AMAZING!!! Once they were cold enough to handle, to remediate their outlook I removed the flown out, burnt jam (you can either cut them off with a kitchen scissors or gently tear them off with your hands). And I ended up with a big pile of it… Then dusted them, ever so lightly, with some powdered sugar and voila!!! My work of art was done.

Taste test? It was… simply amazing. The orange and raspberry marmalade go so all together, the cinnamon and cloves gave it a christmasy flavor, and the walnuts’ crunchiness was almost hypnotizing! The only problem with these cookies is that the jam is rather sweet, so you cannot eat too many of them. Other than that… This JUST became the number one on my favorite cookies list!!! Will definitely make it for christmas, and why not, many-many other occasions as well!!

Yet another christmas cookie recipe at test… This time something completely new to me: using marzipan as a base ingredient in a recipe.

For those of you who don’t know what marzipan is, I am really really sorry! Go to your supermarket and definitely buy some sweets that have marzipan in it (e.g.: Mozart balls) and enjoy the heavenly rush of flavors in your mouth! Marzipan is basically (…) sugar sirup with almond flour and some almond extract. However, the store bought raw marzipan has “secret” ingredients, that make it so much better than what you or I could ever achieve in our humble kitchens. This is why I buy my marzipan, except when I make desert for my father, who has diabetes… Then I grind the almond myself (without the skin, to make it completely white) and make the sirup also, from fructose, which is not all that harmful to people with diabetes (as sugar would be). Marzipan is used as coating for cakes as well as raw material for little cake decorations. In europe it might be as widely used as the fondant in America… I think…

OK… This time I followed the recipe (“Softer Keks hit knackiger Mandel”) from the magazine (more or less) and ended up with the following list of ingredients:

100 g marzipan; 120 g butter; 1 egg; 50 g sugar; 60 g corn starch; 120 g flour; 2 tbsp ground almonds.

First I chopped the marzipan and the butter in small pieces and mixed them well using a hand mixer. Then in went the egg, which also got well incorporated. Then added the rest of the ingredients, and the dough was done.

I scooped little dollops (walnut sized?) onto the baking sheet. Note to self : next time leave space between them: they actually spread out! And note, they spread out, not puff up (since they don’t have baking powder or egg white foam). Bake them for about 10-15 minutes at 160C until starting to turn golden brown around the edges. I also had to rotate the baking sheet once, since my over is not baking evenly…

So, the original recipe said that I would end up with 50 little biscuits. I think I had about half of that… 1 1/2 baking sheet full.

The smell of the cookies, while baking, wasn’t really impressing. Nor was the sight. I mean, plane ol’ cookies, slightly golden around the edges, but that’s all. However, when you bit into them, the flavor of the marzipan was overwhelming! And there I was thinking, that it wouldn’t make any difference replacing it with ground almonds and sugar I’m glad I didn’t.

The cookies are looking slightly raw on the inside, but I think that’s only because of the marzipan – in other words, it’s a discoloration not being raw. I liked the cookies, but next time I have to add the extra almonds on top (before baking) as the recipe suggested, to add some texture to it (otherwise it’s too… simple?). And also, find some way of decorating it: they look like to poorest little cookies on the cookie tray, not the best thing for Christmas, especially if you are thinking about gifting these to someone.

Otherwise, yes, I liked them, I will probably try to make them again, with the above mentioned changes, but it’s not on the top of my list

So, moving on with my christmas baking, I needed something string on chocolate. And I found a very nice recipe, for which I had all the ingredients in the house, so I gave it a try.

The original recipe (“Ingwer-Rum-Hütchen”) produced 100 pieces, which was more than I wanted to have (as much as I like chocolate, too much of anything is bad…). So I changed the recipe here and there, and ended up with a recipe that gave me about 35-40 bite-sized cookies.

Basically, the recipe calls for a ginger flavored biscuit (that needs baking) and a fluffy chocolate ganache topping (which needs cooling). The ingredients that you would need are:

For the cookies: 30 g fresh ginger, finely chopped; 30 g corn starch; 40 g flour + more for rolling; 1 egg white; 20 g sugar; 25 g butter

For the ganache: 100 g chocolate; 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice; 70 ml whipping cream

I started with making the dough for the cookies. Minced the ginger, than added all the ingredients and brought it into a dough that I was able to roll – even though it needed some serious flouring… So, when i was at about 2 mm thickness, I used a 3 cm (1 inch) diameter metal ring to cut out little biscuits. You need a metal cutter, because the ginger pieces might need some “convincing”, if they are exactly on the border of your cookie disc.

Place the cookies on a baking sheet, they won’t grow, so you can put them as close to each other as you wish. Then in the oven, preheated to 150 C, for about 10 minutes? Or until they slightly start to brown on the edges. It won’t take too long. Of course, if you make them thicker, add some extra baking time in there…

For the ganache I melted my chocolate in the microwave (30 seconds – mix well; 30 seconds – mix well until the chocolate is melted). Then added the orange juice and the whipping cream. Mix this well (if you have a wire whisk, even better). The chocolate will get darker, but don’t worry about this! Once the mixture is coldish (colder than your skin temperature, let’s say), use a hand mixer to whip it, until it becomes fluffy (it will also lighten up in color).

When you are done, you get to have fun! Fill a piping bag with the ganache, and use a fairly small tip (/ cut on the bag) for it. Take each cookie and pipe the filling on it, until the whole cookie is covered. I started from the edge, and like a the design on a snail’s house, worked my way towards the middle of the cookie.

As an extra decoration, I put a crunchy m&m’s in the middle of each cookie. I think it looked really pretty. HOWEVER, I had to let it sit overnight to get to a state where it didn’t dirty my hands when I touched it, plus the cookie slightly (!!!) softened up, and the aromas blended together.

So… The original recipe had a different ending. Forget the m&m’s and melt some more chocolate. After piping the filling onto the cookies, you were supposed to refrigerate the cookies and dip them into chocolate. Then refrigerate again, and sprinkle with bitter cocoa powder. I must admit, the visual result was quite astonishing, and I’m guessing if you sprinkled some gold dust on it, it would have been even more festive. But I didn’t feel like melting chocolate again, and refrigerating so many times, so … shortcut it was!

Final verdict? The cookies tasted really well. Next time I would use more ginger, and maybe even ginger powder in the cookies, to bring out the power of the spice. After piping and m&m’s decorating is done, the cookies are hard to get to, because you will dirty your fingers. Which is OK if you bake for yourself, but it you are doing this for more people, I’m not sure everyone (anyone) will enjoy touching the little cookies, if they keep getting chocolaty all over. However, if you make them one day in advance, the ganache forms sort of a little crust on the outside, and will no longer make you dirty when you pick them up So, if I make them again, I will do so in advance.