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cimoreneAlmond shortbread filled with gingerbread chocolate ganache soounds delicious, if a bit rich. I had been wanting to make some lemon cookies this christmas, but I got this recipe in a Swedish country living Christmas recipe magazine for my birthday, and they looked so decadent that I had to try them.
But from the very beginning, everything went wrong! First of all, these cookies are like shortbread, in that they are just butter and sugar with some flour in and dense as a post; but they're unlike shortbread in that half the butter is replaced with a solid 200g of marzipan. Butter for shortbread is easy. You just let it soften to room temperature, then beat it in the stand mixer. But the recipe calls for the 200g of marzipan to be grated.
It turns out that grating marzipan is a pain in the butt. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone ever, but I did think that chilling it first would possibly make the process easier. Probably not actually fun, but easier. That occurred to me after I'd done half of it though, and I didn't really have the time to wait for it to chill.
This recipe also calls for egg yolks, which is another difference from any kind of shortbread I've ever made, and when I was trying to add those I bumped my hand on the stand mixer and dropped half an eggshell into the dough. :|waxjism and I later spent several hours altogether picking fragments of eggshell out of the dough, because I didn't have any spare marzipan (though I had plenty of extra of all the other ingredients of course). Too bad I didn't just throw them out at this point and make gingerbread or meringues instead. :|||
So anyway, after this, instead of flattening all the dough into a cm-thick single cake and then scoring it in fingers or cutting out big circles with a juice glass like I typically do with plain shortbread, this recipe called for it to be rolled out thin. That's bad enough with a drier dough, but it's horrible with any sort of shortbread, as I have discovered over the years (chocolate shortbread and green tea shortbread are two of my favorite cookies!), because it's so oily. On the plus side, the dough does stick to itself, but on the minus side it also sticks to the rolling pin. I'm very grateful that we finally bought a marble pastry rolling pin and that we had plenty of parchment paper on hand for squishing the dough between, but very sad that we can't afford an island with an enormous solid butcherblock top because having to spread parchment paper out and tape it down in order to get a big enough working surface is really not fun. Also the edges of the paper kept coming up even though we taped them down. :|
NOTE: Wax's mom has a big flat silicone sheet for rolling dough out on and it makes it way better. I must go to Kodin Ykkönen and get one of those myself because it was GREAT.
NOTE II: I hate marshmallows which is probably why I never noticed before, after 9 years here, that they don't have them in Finland. I just found out. So I was like, "So what do you do for Rice Krispies Treats?!" and Wax says they don't have them; so there's my contribution to the next Bring Us Ethnic Food From Your Homeland potluck sorted.
The cookies did not brown as well, taste as good, nor have as nice a texture as the plain butter shortbread I sometimes make, which I think is partly the marzipan and partly the thinness. The hint of almond isn't a bad idea, but almond oil or extract would probably work fine.
And the gingerbread chocolate ganache filling (which was very simple to make out of dark chocolate, gingerbread spice mix and coconut milk) was fine, but the result was one of those TOO MUCH!! desserts, from my point of view. And I can't help thinking there could be a better use for gingerbread ganache elsewhere.
I was also a little bummed by my usual sugar cookies and never got around to making my usual meringues at all, and nobody made gingerbread in the whole family. I wish I had gone with the original pecan sandies and lemon biscuits and gingerbread plan instead. :(
But from the very beginning, everything went wrong! First of all, these cookies are like shortbread, in that they are just butter and sugar with some flour in and dense as a post; but they're unlike shortbread in that half the butter is replaced with a solid 200g of marzipan. Butter for shortbread is easy. You just let it soften to room temperature, then beat it in the stand mixer. But the recipe calls for the 200g of marzipan to be grated.
It turns out that grating marzipan is a pain in the butt. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone ever, but I did think that chilling it first would possibly make the process easier. Probably not actually fun, but easier. That occurred to me after I'd done half of it though, and I didn't really have the time to wait for it to chill.
This recipe also calls for egg yolks, which is another difference from any kind of shortbread I've ever made, and when I was trying to add those I bumped my hand on the stand mixer and dropped half an eggshell into the dough. :|
waxjism and I later spent several hours altogether picking fragments of eggshell out of the dough, because I didn't have any spare marzipan (though I had plenty of extra of all the other ingredients of course). Too bad I didn't just throw them out at this point and make gingerbread or meringues instead. :|||So anyway, after this, instead of flattening all the dough into a cm-thick single cake and then scoring it in fingers or cutting out big circles with a juice glass like I typically do with plain shortbread, this recipe called for it to be rolled out thin. That's bad enough with a drier dough, but it's horrible with any sort of shortbread, as I have discovered over the years (chocolate shortbread and green tea shortbread are two of my favorite cookies!), because it's so oily. On the plus side, the dough does stick to itself, but on the minus side it also sticks to the rolling pin. I'm very grateful that we finally bought a marble pastry rolling pin and that we had plenty of parchment paper on hand for squishing the dough between, but very sad that we can't afford an island with an enormous solid butcherblock top because having to spread parchment paper out and tape it down in order to get a big enough working surface is really not fun. Also the edges of the paper kept coming up even though we taped them down. :|
NOTE: Wax's mom has a big flat silicone sheet for rolling dough out on and it makes it way better. I must go to Kodin Ykkönen and get one of those myself because it was GREAT.
NOTE II: I hate marshmallows which is probably why I never noticed before, after 9 years here, that they don't have them in Finland. I just found out. So I was like, "So what do you do for Rice Krispies Treats?!" and Wax says they don't have them; so there's my contribution to the next Bring Us Ethnic Food From Your Homeland potluck sorted.
The cookies did not brown as well, taste as good, nor have as nice a texture as the plain butter shortbread I sometimes make, which I think is partly the marzipan and partly the thinness. The hint of almond isn't a bad idea, but almond oil or extract would probably work fine.
And the gingerbread chocolate ganache filling (which was very simple to make out of dark chocolate, gingerbread spice mix and coconut milk) was fine, but the result was one of those TOO MUCH!! desserts, from my point of view. And I can't help thinking there could be a better use for gingerbread ganache elsewhere.
I was also a little bummed by my usual sugar cookies and never got around to making my usual meringues at all, and nobody made gingerbread in the whole family. I wish I had gone with the original pecan sandies and lemon biscuits and gingerbread plan instead. :(
