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December 13: Gevulde Koeken

gevulde koeken 24daysofcookies
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If you’ve been with me since the beginning (of the web page), you may remember these from 2013. You know, back when I had no white hair, no teenagers, and no dual masters degrees. I made these after a suggestion at a bar from a Dutch friend. I love that old me went to small-town bars and talked about cookies.

Hell, current me would probably do that too, if I knew more people around here.

Anyway, I digress. I made these only once, and they were phenomenal. They also only made 10 cookies total, which is probably why I haven’t made them again.

This time, I decided to try them again, and maybe make them just a tad smaller. (Just a tad! I know they are supposed to be large!)

Gevulde Koeken

For the dough:

  • 2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1 t. baking powder (if it’s a smidge under a teaspoon, even better)
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1-2 T. of cold water
  • 1 3/4 sticks of butter

For the filling:

  • 1 c. almond paste
  • 2 T. sugar
  • 1 egg white (save the yolk!)
  • 2 T. water
  • 1 t. almond extract

For brushing onto the cookie:

  • 1 egg yolk (that one saved from the egg white above)
  • 1 T milk
  • Sliced or whole almonds
  1. Mix the dry ingredients and cut the butter into the dough, until it has the consistency of wet sand.
  2. Add a tablespoon of ice cold water and knead the dough into a cohesive whole, making sure all the butter is well mixed in.
  3. Pat into an oval, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate while you make the paste.
  4. Now crumble up (or dice up with a knife the almond paste and beat it with the rest of the ingredients until it’s foamy and thick. (If you think it’s too runny, add a tablespoon of flour, but not more.) 
  5. Set your oven to 350F and turn it on. Take the dough out of the fridge, cut it in half, and roll one half out, to about 1/8 of an inch and cut out eight rounds. You can use a canning ring, the mouth of a glass, or a biscuit cutter if you have one big enough.
  6. Place one huge heaping teaspoon of the almond filling in the middle of one cookie and then place a second round on top; carefully seal the edges. You can do this with a fork or gently tapping it with your finger. 
  7. When all are done, place them on a parchment lined baking sheet or on a silicone mat. Beat the egg yolk with the milk and brush the top of the cookies, then place an almond on top.
  8. Bake for about thirty minutes or until golden.
cut in butter
Cut your butter in cubes first before attempting to “cut in” butter for dough. It makes it a lot easier!
kinetic sand dough
I’m fearing the nightmare of kinetic sand I will have after making these!

Any time I see the term “cut in butter” in a recipe, I think about my friend Jen and how I introduced her to the concept of a pastry cutter. I generally only see this term in biscuits and pie crust, but every once in a while, I see it in a cookie recipe. It’s just a way of making sure your dough will be light and flaky, because there will be butter incorporated into the dry ingredients at the molecular level. Okay, not the molecular level, but at a very small level that makes little pinpoints of butter ooze around flour. Or something like that.

When your dough looks like kinetic sand (and you have a brief, yet strong, urge to yell “Don’t get it on the carpet, kids!”) then it’s the right consistency.

For the filling, I’m not sure who can “crumble” almond paste, but it’s not me. I diced it up like cheese and threw it in my mixer. This stuff smells heavenly, by the way.

almond paste filling, gevulde koeken
Gevulde Koeken filling. Mmmmm.

I didn’t take any pictures of me rolling it out or cutting it, but it’s thin. I generally do my sugar cookies about about 1/4 inch thick. This is half that.

I was able to get a few more than 10 Christmas cookies out of the recipe this time. Not many more, but more than 10. I think I got five.

These are crumbly and flakey, with that yummy filling in the center. If you put one on top of a cup of hot coffee or tea, it will make that filling really melty and good.

December 1: Oreshki

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Well folks, here we are again at the start of another December. I’m proud to say this is my 15th year doing this crazy cookie thing–it may not have always been documented, but it’s always been baked!

Before I get into today’s cookie, the kick-off cookie, the cookie that starts it all (you get the picture), I want to let you know of a style change I’ll be making. Instead of putting the recipe at the end of the post, I’ll be putting it at the start. Why? Because I’ve *also* scrolled through cooking/baking pages looking for the recipe, just like you do, and it’s annoying. While I hope you stick around and read my color commentary on the cookie at hand, I want to make sure you get what you need out of this first.

Oreshki (from Alonya’s Cooking)

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 stick unsalted butter softened
  • 6 1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1/8 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp vinegar
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • FILLING:
  • 1 stick of unsalted butter softened
  • 1 14oz can dulce de leche
  • 1 tsp sour cream

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Make the filling first, as it needs time to set; beat together the filling ingredients and refrigerate until needed.
  2. TO MAKE ORESHKI: In a medium bowl beat the eggs and sugar until pale and frothy; set aside.
  3. In a separate small bowl beat the butter until smooth then add the mayonnaise and mix to combine. Set aside.
  4. Dissolve the vinegar with baking soda and set aside.Sift together the flour and cornstarch into a large bowl.
  5. Add the egg mixture, butter mixture and soda mixture and beat everything together until a soft dough forms.
  6. Cover and refrigerate dough for at least 1 hour before handling.
  7. Once dough is cold enough to work with; scoop out 1 teaspoon full of dough into each oreshki mold.Lightly mold in the dough into the cookie iron.
  8. Cover mold with the lid and bake in a preheated 375 degree F oven for 30-35 min or until golden.
  9. Invert cookies onto a tray and continue to work with remaining dough chilling the dough in-between the handling.
  10. Cool cookies completely before filling.
  11. TO ASSEMBLE ORESHKI: Fill each cookie half with the filling mixture and combine the cookie halves to form a walnut shape cookie.
  12. Refrigerate shells and serve cold at all times. Enjoy!

Okay, now to the good stuff.

So I have a very cool grocery store within walking distance of my house. (Not that I walked there, no, it’s December and I’m not in the South anymore.) It looks boring enough from the outside, like most grocery stores do. However, inside it’s like an international vacation without ever pulling out a passport. They have Asian things, they have Hispanic things, they have Kosher and Hebrew things, and they have Russian and European things.

On this last point, there are a lot of countries in Europe represented here, but there is more Russian/Eastern European things in this grocery store than anything else. (And yes, I know Russian is in Asia.) There’s a large Russian/Eastern European population near where I live…though I don’t know if I’d know this without help of this grocery store.

My point is, they have cool stuff there in other languages that look amazing. I saw these a few weeks ago and haven’t stopped thinking about them.

They looked like walnut shells, but baked, and apparently you fill them with things. As I was contemplating Googling that exact phrase, I saw the name Oreshki on the package and instead Googled that.

I literally saved myself hours in doing that.

I found a number of recipes for this cookie, generally considered a Slavic cookie, and in all of them, the recipe talks about getting a special pan to make these cookie shells. In fact, every recipe I saw talked mostly about how to prepare the cookie part of this, and the filling was mainly an afterthought.

I brought out my Santa mug to soften my first butter of the season.

As I already had the cookie handled, I went straight to the filling. (Though I’m now intrigued with this pan and it’s on my Amazon list.)

Once I found a recipe I thought I could handle, I assembled the filling. In this case, it was literally three ingredients: Dulce de Leche, butter, and sour cream. All things I love.

Mix, chill, and plop.

Or so I thought. I mixed. I chilled. And I plopped…and then discovered I put too much filling in each and had to scoop out a spoonful from half my shells.

My overfilled shells, and the aftermath of scooping out a spoonful from half of them. Don’t worry. I think this filling will make an appearance in some breakfast foods soon.

Live and learn.

Once I was able to assemble these cookies without a Dulce de Leche lava trail, I sprinkled them with powdered sugar and put them in the fridge. This recipe says specifically to keep them there. I have no problem with keeping these cold, but I live with 2.5 teenagers (my youngest is 12 and a half). Things in the fridge tend to disappear quickly, without a trace, and with no one taking responsibility for the disappearance.

Therefore, these will live safely in the trunk of my car.