Cookbook of the week #22 : Sweet Food, including a recipe for Almond, orange and cardamom biscotti

I’m back. I have had a lot going on in my life since I last posted, but now I am ready to pick up where I left off.



This week’s cookbook was published by Murdoch Books, part of a series of themed books that are in equal measure recipe collections and unabashed food porn. There is a photo of every dish, each one designed to make the reader hungry. The book is divided into chapters for baked goods, desserts and pies & tarts, and other than the chapter divisions, there is no rhyme or reason to the way the recipes are collected, so that for example, the 5 cheesecake recipes in the book are to be found in two chapters and none of them on adjacent pages. This makes for interesting browsing. I have found that I can open this book at random and be almost certain to find something I want to try. I have had to eliminate several recipes I would have liked to try because of hard-to-find ingredients.

Note: The tbs called for are 20 ml tbs, rather than 15 ml ones.

The first recipe I chose is Almond, orange and cardamom biscotti

In Italian “biscotti” means “twice baked”, but according to Wikipedia, in Italy the term is used for any type of cookie. In North-America it refers to twice-baked pastries like the ones in this recipe, which in Italy are called “biscotti di Prato”, “cantoucchi” or “cantoucchini”.

I would like to imagine that when J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about lembas, he had something like biscotti in mind.

Makes about 40.

2 eggs
155 g (2/3 cup) firmly packed soft brown sugar
125 g (1 cup) self-rising flour (if you don’t have self-rising flour, use 1 cup plain flour and add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt)
90 g (3/4 cup) plain flour
125 g (1 1/4 cups) almonds
1 tbs finely grated orange zest
1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Preheat the oven to 160°C (315°F), or lower temperature as indicated for convection ovens. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and creamy. Sift the flours into the bowl, add the almonds, zest and cardamom and mix to a soft dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, divide in two and shape into two loaves, about 5 x 20 cm (2 x 8 inches) in size.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack. When cool, cut the loaves into 1 cm (2/5 inch) slices with a serrated bread knife. The biscotti will be crumbly on the edges, so work slowly and if you can, hold the sides of the loaves as you cut.

Arrange the slices on baking trays in one layer and return to the oven for 10 minutes on each side. If the slices look like they are not completely dry when removed from the oven, don’t worry – they will become crisp when they cool. Allow to cool before serving.

Great with coffee.

Edit:

Recipe review:
I made this recipe yesterday after I posted it. The dough was EXTREMELY sticky, so sticky that I ended up just forming it into one rough loaf and then I went to scrape a thick layer of gluey dough off my hands. Next time I will wet my hands before handling the dough. The raw loaf looked like a misshapen lump of lava, but it baked up smooth and when I sliced it it looked like biscotti should. In the instructions it says to cool the loaf – I would just let it cool for about 10 minutes and then slice it, because fully cooled it was hard to cut because the crust was so hard. The biscotti are very good, with a mild orangey flavour and just a hint of cardamom.

Sample recipe from The Cooking of the Middle-East: Kadin Göbeği (“Lady’s Navel” fritters)

Here is a Turkish dish with an unusual name. I usually find sweets that are steeped in syrup too sweet, but the cream should alleviate that.

Syrup:
1 lb. (ca. 450 g) sugar
3/4 pint (425 ml) water
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Put the sugar, water and lemon juice into a small saucepan and bring to the boil over moderate heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat and cook, uncovered, until the syrup reaches 220°F (105 °C). Set aside and let it cool to room temperature.

Fritters:
5/8 pint (355 ml) water
1 1/2 oz. (40 g) butter
1/8 tsp salt
8 oz. (225 g) sifted plain flour
3 eggs
Vegetable oil for deep frying
1/2 tsp almond essence
3 tbs chilled double cream, stiffly whipped

Put the water, butter and salt in a saucepan and bing to the boil at high heat, stirring until the butter melts. Add the flour all at once and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until well mixed into a smooth mass. Make a well in the center of the dough and add one egg. Beat well until well mixed. Repeat with the remaining eggs. The dough should be thick, smooth and shiny.

Heat 3-4 inches (7,5 to 10 cm) of oil in a large deep-fat frying pan or electric deep-fryer, to a temperature of 360°F (180°C). To prepare the fritters, pinch off about 1 1/2 tbs of dough and roll into a ball 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter. Dip your thumb into the almond essence and press it into each ball to make a “navel” 1/2 inch (ca. 1 cm) deep. Deep fry, 5 at a time (or as many as will fit into your pan/frier with good space for turning), for about 10 minutes, turning them for even browning. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain briefly, and dip into the syrup to steep for 5 minutes. Transfer to a dish and let cool to room temperature. Just before serving, drop a teaspoon of whipped cream into the “navel” of each fritter.

Recipe of the week from Cookies: Raspberry Almond Shortbread Thumbprints

Due to unforeseen circumstances I have been unable to test more than one recipe from the book as i had planned, so this stands as recipe of the week.

Prep time: 45 minutes
Chilling time: 60 minutes
Baking time: 14 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes

Makes about 42 cookies.

The cookies:
1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup raspberry jam

The glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar (icing sugar, confectioner’s sugar)
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
2-3 tsp water

Beat butter, sugar and almond extract together in a large mixer bowl at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until creamy (2-3 minutes). Reduce the speed to low and add the flour, beating until well mixed (2-3 minutes). Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Shape the dough into balls, about 2,5 cm (1 inch) across. Put the balls on ungreased cookies sheets, about 2 inches apart. Make an indentation in the centre of each cookies with your thumb (don’t worry if the edges of the indentations crack slightly). Fill each indentation with about 1/4 tsp of raspberry jam.

Bake for 14 to 18 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are lightly browned. Remove from the oven and let stand for 1 minute, then place on a wire rack to cook. Let cool completely before glazing.

To glaze, stir together the glaze ingredients with a whisk until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cookies.



Notes and review:

These cookies (or pastries), even when only halfway well-made like mine, are real showstoppers because it is obvious how much work went into making them. In my case the glazing went a bit wild, and no wonder because I used a spoon to dribble it onto the cookies. Next time I will use my Wilton decorating bag and the tiniest piping tip I can find.

It is obvious to anyone who compares their own final product with the lovely perfection of the photo in the book that the jam was added to the cookies after they were baked – another secret of food photography revealed:



I made the cookies as instructed in the book, even down to making the balls an inch across, but I still only got about 30 cookies out of the recipe. The only reason I can guess is that the flour I use must be different from what they use in the Land O‘Lakes test kitchen so the dough turned out denser, or perhaps I beat it for too long? It‘s hard to tell with shortbread, because it is so dense anyway.

The cookies are every bit as good as they look. They are dense and a bit crumbly and have a slightly sandy texture. The cookies themselves have only a mild almond flavour, but the glazing has a lot more that is prevented from becoming overbearing by the fruity flavour of the raspberry jam.

Recipe of the week from Moroccan Cooking: Moroccan cigars

These cigar-like savoury pastry rolls are known as Bourek in Morocco. This is a popular restaurant dish.

Servings: 20
Time: 40 minutes prep time, 25-30 minutes cooking.

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
705 g lean minced beef or lamb
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger
Ground pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
5 eggs
500 g filo pastry
180 g butter, melted

Filling:
Sauté the onion in the olive oil until it is soft. Add the minced meat, stirring and breaking it well apart during the cooking. Add cinnamon, allspice, ginger and pepper and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the meat is well cooked and lump free. Add parsley. Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and pour over the meat. Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, until egg mixture takes on a creamy consistency. Adjust taste if necessary. Cool.

Pastry:
Preheat oven to 150°C.
Cut each sheet of filo into three equal-sized rectangles. Stack up and cover with a damp cloth until filling is ready. Brush the top rectangle with melted butter and place a teaspoon of filling along one of the short edges. Fold in the long edges and near end of pastry around the filling and roll up into a cigar shape. Repeat until all the pastry squares are filled.

Place the cigars side by side on a greased baking tray and brush with melted butter. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the cigars are golden. Serve hot.



Notes and review:
As usual, I only made half a recipe. I forgot to buy parsley, so I had to leave it out. I don’t think it mattered much, perhaps a note of veggie freshness that was missing. Another time I would like to try cilantro. The meat I used was beef.

The filo sheets I got can’t have been the same size as those available in Australia (where the book was published) – they must have been bigger, because when divided in three, each rectangle of dough was enough for a tablespoon of filling, rather than the stated teaspoon. With a teaspoon of filling the rolls would have been cigarette slender and I would have run out of dough before half the filling was used up. I got 14 rolls out of 6 whole sheets of dough (270 grams) – it should have been more but the outermost sheet of filo was too torn up to use, and I only got 2 rolls out of the second sheet. When the dough was used up I still had enough filling left for at least six more rolls.

The preparation and cooking went well, apart from one minor burn due to working too close to a hot stove (my first kitchen injury since I started this recipe challenge). There is quite a bit of work involved in rolling up the “cigars”, but it’s worth it.

The filling is good on its own and I think with the addition of cream and Parmigiano-Reggiano it would make a very good pasta sauce. With added tomatoes it could be made into a fairly authentic meat sauce for moussaka.

The amount of spices given in the recipe gives the mince a mild flavour and can safely be increased. I recommend adjusting the flavour after the beaten eggs have been added. I also recommend adding some salt.

This is a great party dish, perfect finger food that's small enough for nibbling on. It can be prepared ahead and frozen once the rolls are all rolled, before the second cooking stage. I think it would be nice served with a sweet dip of some sort, perhaps sweet chilli sauce, sweet and sour sauce or even redcurrant jelly.

While I did like these meat-filled bourek, I kept thinking how delicious they would be filled with cheese, perhaps feta, fresh goat’s cheese or even Roquefort, and as a matter of fact they often are made with a cheese filling. Next time, I think I will try just that.

Recipe of the week: Birds' Nests

I decided to make the Birds' Nests for various reasons, not the least of which is that I have never made pastries topped with glazed fruit before, and I love them. It is also by far the fiddliest of the 6 recipes. You can get excellent ones from the Danish bakery which is located a couple of streets away from where I live: little bowls of pastry filled with vanilla custard and topped with glazed strawberries. I have a clipped recipe somewhere for those, but the Birds' Nests will be good practice. As to the other recipes, I have put them on my To Do list, especially the Napoleons which I want to make for my mother (who loves them) the next time she visits me.

Results:
Written as each stage was completed.

1.
I began yesterday by making some pastries. It didn't start well: I nearly burnt them. Marzipan pastry should ideally only be baked to a light golden colour, retaining a chewy, almost raw, centre inside a crisp shell, but I ended up with brown ones. Fortunately they don't smell burnt and are not hard through. This is entirely due to a little bit of carelessness on my part: I started doing the washing-up while the pastry was baking and lost track of the time. This wouldn't have mattered so much if I had a regular oven, but I have a temperamental convection oven where seconds can decide whether baked products will turn out just right or too much. I lowered the temperature to 180°C, as you don't need quite as high temperatures when using a convection oven, but forgot the time and at 13 1/2 minutes the pastries were darker than they should have been, meaning that 12 minutes at that temperature would probably have been about right. Lesson learned for next time.

2.
Next time being today: I only made a half recipe yesterday, but I wanted to do this just right, so today I made another half-recipe of pastries. As yesterday's pastries were a bit larger than the recipe states and also somewhat uneven in size, I made circles of the right size on the baking paper with a pair of compasses and piped the dough inside the circles to get even sized pastries. These turned out much better, although they were unevenly coloured, which I blame on the convection oven. Since the dark patches were on the sides this could not be fixed by turning the cookie sheet around in the oven. Just as well they will be covered with icing and chocolate.

A pastry base:

3.
The butter icing had a somewhat raw sugar taste when ready, so I added a little vanilla which gave it a smoother taste. It was still too sweet for my tastebuds, but I figure the chocolate will temper the sweetness.

4.
The chocolate stage went well for the most part, except the chocolate didn't hold very well onto the icing so there were little pockets of white icing showing through here and there. I tried redipping one pastry, but then part of the previous coat of chocolate slipped off, so I didn't bother with the rest. I quickly had 19 pastries covered and cooling in the refrigerator.

4.
I ended up using canned mixed fruit in light syrup to top the pastries. Unfortunately there were only 2 cocktail cherries in the entire can, so 17 pastries only have whitish, orange and yellow fruit pieces on them (pears, peaches, pineapple) but no splash of red to give them a bit of ooomph, but this is only an experiment so it will do for now.
I had my usual problem with the gelatine: I thought it would never gel, but when it finally did it happened so rapidly that I had problems getting it to cover the last few pastry toppings evenly, but it worked even if it was a bit bubbly from my vigorous whisking.

These are not the prettiest pastries I have ever made but all in all I think they turned out rather well for an amateur's first attempt. Of course the taste test is left. I'm off to visit some friends to get a final judgement.

6.
My friends pronounced the pastries "very good", and I agree. They are a bit oversweet with preserved fruit and we agreed that fresh strawberries and darker chocolate would improve them. You really only can eat two or three in one sitting, and I strongly recommend serving coffee with them to counteract their sweetness.

7.
Now for how I would change the recipe for future use. Firstly, I would make the rim of the nests from piped pastry, not icing, and make them a bit deeper. Then I would cover the rim in chocolate and fill the nests, not with icing, but with custard or vanilla pudding, top with fresh strawberries or peach slices and cover with a glaze made from sugar syrup rather than fruit juice. They could still be called Birds' Nests, since the shape would be retained.

Recipes 3 & 4: French Waffles & Napoleons

French Waffles
Time: about 35 minutes. Makes about 20 pieces (or more if you make them smaller)

1 package frozen puff pastry (one packet contains 425 g), or make the same amount from scratch
Granulated sugar

Thaw out the puff pastry and roll out each sheet until it has about doubled in size. Use cookie cutters or a glass to cut out round pieces, about 7 cm in diameter (or smaller). Sprinkle sugar on top of some wax paper and lay the dough pieces on top of the sugar and roll out each piece until slightly oblong (I would just press down on them with my hand). Only one side should be sugared.
Cover a cookie sheet with baking paper and put the dough pieces on the baking paper with the sugared side up. Prick each piece well with a fork. Bake at 200°C for about 10 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack.

Coffee filling:
100 g butter, soft
75 g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
50 g chocolate, grated
1 sheet gelatine (3/4 tsp)
100 ml strong coffee, warm

Soak the gelatine in cold water. Meanwhile, mix together the butter and sugar in a mixer. Add the egg yolk and grated chocolate. Melt the gelatine in the warm coffee. Cool. When the coffee-gelatine begins to set add it to the butter-sugar-egg-chocolate mixture a little at a time.

Smooth a layer of creme on half the waffles and sandwich them together with the rest of the waffles. Allow to set before serving.

Excellent with coffee.


Napoleons
Time: about 45 minutes. Makes about 15.

1 package frozen puff pastry (one packet contains 425 g), or make the same amount from scratch

Thaw the puff pastry. Cut each sheet into three even-sized pieces. Put them on a cookie sheet and bake on the center rung of the oven for about 20 minutes (the original recipe gives no temperature, but my guess is 180°C). Cool on a cooling rack.

Creme:
2 eggs
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs cornflour
250 ml milk
1/2 vanilla pod

Slice the vanilla pod down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Whip together the eggs, vanilla seeds, sugar and cornflour. Put the vanilla pod in the milk and warm to the boiling point in a saucepan. Remove the vanilla pod and whisk the milk into the egg mixture. Pour the creme back into the saucepan and warm up to the boiling point, whisking constantly. Cool.

Glaze:
150 g icing sugar
1 tbs rum or water

Topping:
Raspberry marmalade or jam
250 ml whipping cream

To make the glaze, stir together the icing sugar and rum/water. Split each pastry puff horizontally into two about equally thick pieces. Put a thin layer of marmalade on the bottom piece of each pastry. Add a spoonful of creme and top with the other piece of the same pastry. Add a thin layer of glaze on top of each pastry. Whip the cream, put in a pastry bag with a fluting nozzle and decorate the pastries.

Recipes 1 & 2: Birds' Nests & Honeycake squares

Birds' Nests
Time: about 70 minutes + cooling time. Makes approx. 20.

Almond layers:
200 g baking marzipan (almond mass)
8 tbs sugar
2 egg whites

Grate the marzipan and mix with half the sugar. Whip the egg whites until stiff and add the remaining half of the sugar to them, a little at a time. Add the egg whites to the almond mass a little at a time and mix into a smooth mass.
Put the almond mass into a pastry bag and squeeze with a circular motion into individual portions about 4 1/2 cm across (it doesn't say how thick, but 1 1/2 cm should be about right. These cakes do not expand during baking) onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Bake at 200°C for 12-15 minutes. Pick the baking paper up with the cakes still on and put on a rack to cool.

Butter icing:
100 ml sugar
3 tbs water
2 egg yolks
125 g butter, soft

Cook a clear syrup from the sugar and water and cool. Pour over the egg yolks and whip until light and fluffy. Put the butter in a mixer and add the egg mixture a little at a time until you have a smooth paste.
Remove the pastries from the baking paper and smooth a little icing on top of each pastry. Put the rest of the icing in a pastry bag with a small nozzle and pipe a rim all around the edge of each pastry. This rim will hold the fruit pieces so they don't slip off. Refrigerate until the icing is firm.

Covering:
125 g dark chocolate
2 tbs coconut oil

Melt the chocolate over a water-bath and add the oil. Mix well. Dip the icing-covered part of each pastry into the chocolate, to coat. Cool the pastries before adding the topping.

Decoration:
Preserved fruit, for example mandarin orange sections, pineapple and red cocktail cherries
200 ml liquid from the preserved fruit
3 sheets of gelatin (about 5 g)

Remove the fruit from the liquid and keep the liquid. Drain the fruit well. Cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces if necessary and put three pieces of different fruit into each "nest".

Soak the gelatine in a little water for 5 minutes. Squeeze out the water from the gelatine and melt it in 2 tbs of the fruit liquid (heat in a saucepan over low heat and beat gently with a whisk). Add the rest of the fruit liquid and cool in a cold water-bath, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to stiffen. Brush a thin layer over the fruit on every cake and refrigerate.

Honeycake Squares
Time: about 100 minutes. Makes approx. 20 pieces.

250 g honey
100 g dark brown sugar
100 g butter
2 eggs, beaten
300 g flour
2 tsp hartshorn powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground cloves
12 tsp ground ginger
Grated peel of one orange
50 g coarsely ground almonds
2 tbs preserved orange peel, chopped

Warm the honey, brown sugar and butter in a saucepan, stirring constantly until mixed. The mixture must not boil. Cool until lukewarm. Add the beaten eggs, a little at a time. Mix together flour, hartshorn, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and grated orange peel. Add to the honey mixture and mix well. Add the almonds and preserved orange peel.
Line a small oven-pan or shallow square baking pan with baking paper and put in the dough, smoothing it well. Bake at 165°C for about 45 minutes. Cool a little, then remove from the pan and cool completely on a rack. Cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Chocolate glaze:
75 g dark chocolate, grated
75 g sugar
3 tbs boiling water

Melt the chocolate over a water-bath. Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and add to the melted chocolate. Stir over the hot water-bath until smooth and well mixed. Glaze the cake squares.

Cookbook of the week #2: 100 fristende konditorkager

Danish, Swedish and Norwegian women's weekly magazines are quite popular in Iceland, especially among the older generations of women who grew up before English became the Icelanders' foreign language of choice. These magazines feature true life stories, interviews, crafts, horoscopes, columns of all sorts, and recipes. Several times a year they will include a free gift, often a small recipe book or booklet. This is one such, included with a copy of the Norwegian Sunday edition of Ugebladet ("The Weekly"). Most of my Scandinavian recipe books came with similar magazines, most of which were collected by my grandmother, but a couple I bought myself, either for the recipe book or quilting or crochet patterns.



This is a difficult book to read. Every recipe is mouthwatering, and it doesn't matter if it's read before, during or after a meal, it induces hunger – or rather, it gives one an appetite for something sweet. The chapters cover small cakes, oven-pan cakes, layer cakes, rolls, tarts, choux-pastry, meringues and marzipan cakes, and cookies, all of them something you might expect to find in a fine bakery or served in a fancy café, and, as a matter fact, the title translates as 100 tempting pastry-chef cakes.

There are a few old friends here, like Sarah Bernhardts and Sachertorte, as well as creations I have never heard of. I would have loved to make just about everything in the book, but finally I narrowed it down to half a dozen recipes:

The first is called Bird's Nests. These are small individual pastries in four layers: one of baked marzipan, then a layer of butter icing, then melted chocolate over the icing, and a decoration of small pieces of gelatine/fruit juice glazed tinned fruit on top. If I make these, I think I will use fresh fruit.

The second is Honey-cake Squares. This is a spicy oven-pan cake with honey and almonds and chocolate icing. The cake is cut into small individual cakes before being glazed.

The third contender is Napoleon Cakes or simply Napoleons. These are little layered cakes made from vanilla custard sandwiched between pieces of puff pastry with a layer of raspberry marmalade, and topped with rum icing and whipped cream. According to Wikipedia they are known as Vanilla or Custard Slices in Britain and are a variation of Mille-feuilles pastries, which are similar but have more layers of both pastry and custard.
I have never tasted these, but my mother speaks of them with much nostalgia as a childhood favourite and has asked me to find out if they are sold in any bakeries in Reykjavík. Unfortunately I have yet to find one, so this is a strong contender. I would love to surprise her with Napoleon cakes the next time she comes to visit me.

The fourth is a Chocolate-Nut Roll. This is a log or roll (obvious, really). The cake is made with nuts and cocoa with a chocolate-orange cream filling and decorated with white chocolate and flaked hazelnuts.

The fifth is a Chocolate Roll with Daim Filling. This is a chocolate roll filled with buttercream into which has been mixed crushed Daim candy, and decorated with dark chocolate and chocolate sprinkles. For those unfamiliar with Daim, it is almond brittle covered with milk chocolate and if there is an IKEA store near you it is sold in the food section.

The sixth is French Waffles, puff pastry sandwiches filled with coffee-cremé. I love these, but I like them better with vanilla buttercream, so I would probably make half with coffee-cremé and half with vanilla buttercream.

Since there is not a problem with copyright here (I translated the recipes into English and whatever copyright there may be therefore belongs to me – not that I forbid anyone to copy them), I am going to showcase all six recipes, two per day, starting tomorrow, and then decide which one I will make. I have plans to try all of them eventually, but I will only test one now (or perhaps two if I'm in the mood).