Nougatientjes

I haven't been blogging for a while, but I'm back!
I've baked a lot of American recipes in the last year and a half and started to miss our own local baked goods. For christmas I received a book called Koekje, which translates to English as Cookie. It contains 100 Dutch cookie recipes, 50 are classics and 50 are more contemperary.

One of the recipes I made from this book is Nougatientjes or Amsterdamse Koggetjes. I have always known them as nougatientjes.

The recipe dates from 1935 when the Dutch Pastry Bakers Association held a contest to come up with a new cookie, it was probably mister Dorssen who won with the Amsterdamse Koggetjes.
The catholic and christian bakers were members of different associations and couldn't use the name Amsterdamse Koggetjes, so they baked them as Nougatientjes. Both names are still in use.

Ingredients:
For the Nougat:
75 grams caster sugar
25 grams water

For the Dough:
160 grams white soft sugar
200 grams soft unsalted butter
2 tablespoons milk
2 grams salt
15 grams vanilla sugar
200 grams soft flour*

Start with making the caramel (nougat).
Bring the water and sugar to a boil and let it caramelize until deep golden brown. Be careful, this stuff is hot!! Also while it's boiling don't stir the pan.
Pour the caramel in a thin layer on a piece of parchment paper and let it cool down.
Preheat your oven to 160 C (320 F).
Cream the butter with the soft white sugar, when creamy add the milk, salt and vanilla sugar, beat until smooth, add the sifted flour and stir until it's incorperated.
Roll over the caramel with a rolling pin to break it up in small pieces and stir the pieces through the dough.

The recipe from the book says that you can pipe the cookies, I just use 2 teaspoons and put little heaps of dough on a lighty buttered baking sheet, about 3/4 of a teaspoon of dough at the time, keep some space in between them, they will spread.
Bake the cookies about 15 minutes. They will have a light brown edge. (In my oven it takes about 17 minutes.)
Let them cool down a few minutes on the sheet, than take them off and let them cool further on a wire rack. This recipe makes about 50 cookies. They will stay fresh for about a week if you keep them in an airtight cookie jar.

*) Here in Holland we have a special flour that is called in Dutch "Zeeuwse Bloem", in English that would translate in to flour from Zeeland (a Dutch province).

What makes this flour special? The ground in Zeeland is mostly clay, the climate is a moderate sea climate. These two factors give a totaly different wheat than the wheat grown inland. The kernel has way less starch, is moister and doesn't bind as well as AP flour.

AP flour comes from inland, is dryer, has more starch, so more gluten which gives it a higher binding power.

I buy my flour at the windmill in Vlaardingen, hey this is Holland! You might try these recipes with cake flour or another low protein flour. It'll make all the difference in the end result!

No more TWD for me.

I've decided to quit Tuesdays with Dorie. There are a lot of other things that I want to bake and it is starting to feel like a chore instead of fun.
Another reason is that I (we) are dissapointed with a lot of the recipes. Must be our European tastebuds.

I will keep track of my favorite blogs to see what they make every week and if I see something coming up that sounds fabulous I will bake that too.

Thank you all for the weekly visits, you will find other baking and cooking recipes here from now on, so drop by every once in a while!

TWD: Buttery Jam Cookies

This weeks recipe was picked by Heather of Randomodity and the Girl. The recipe can be found on her blog or in Dorie Greenspans Baking book.

I was looking forward to another round of cookies, these were drop cookies so pretty simple to do, no rolling, no cutting, just spoon them on the baking sheet and that's it.
They sounded great, butter, jam, what's not to like? Well they were very, very bland, they lacked taste. It wasn't crunchy, but also not really soft, it tried to be a lot of things, but didn't shine. We all agreed here that this was the recipe we liked least so far.

Oh well, there is always butterscotch pudding next week, butter, booze, what's not to like ;-)

TWD: Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

This weeks TWD recipe was picked by Ulrike from Küchenlatein, if you want to make it yourself you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's: Baking, From My House To Yours or on Ulrike's Blog.

The cookies were very simple to make, I didn't do anything fancy with them, just wanted to see how they would taste without any additions.
I went the slice and bake way, but I think I cut them a little too thick. The taste was still great, but next time I will do them a little thinner, probably roll them out and use cookie cutters.

Thanks for picking this one Ulrike! We all loved them.

Linzer Sablés

Made it back safely after a fabulous cruise! Our luggage decided to stay away a day longer but apart from that everything was great.

This week's Tuesday With Dorie recipe was picked by me! The first guy who joined the group finally got his pick :-)

I choose the Linzer Sablés, so far I've enjoyed the European style recipes more than the American, maybe because I'm European and my tastebuds are more used to those treats? Anyway, I love the way they look with the jam peeking out of the little hole.

I made mine with raspberry jam which I passed through a sieve, after heating it up, to get rid of the seeds.
They were very easy to make and the taste of the cookies comes close to "speculaas", must be the cloves.

I'm pleased with my choice, it's not my favorite recipe but I would make it again.


Here is the recipe:

When I was a kid, the main street in our neighborhood boasted a bakery every two blocks. We always had freshly made bread from the baker closest to our house and almost as often a box of butter cookies from the baker farthest away. My mother would always ask for an assortment, which meant we ended up with too many of those pink-and-green marzipan cookies and not enough of the linzers, buttery, lightly spiced sandwich cookies filled with raspberry jam that peeked through a little cutout on the top. These were the ones I liked best.
This recipe is not a duplicate of the cookie of my childhood, but it is inspired by it and it brings hack childhood memories. I've made these cookies a bit spicier than the originals- I like that extra zing-and I make the peekaboo cutouts only when I'm in the mood to fuss a hit. The rolling out, which is a cinch, can be done just as soon as the malleable dough is made.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups finely ground almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Scant 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 large egg
2 teaspoons water
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup raspberry jam or strained apricot jam plus 1 teaspoon water (optional)
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Whisk together the ground nuts, flour, cinnamon, salt and cloves. Using a fork, stir the egg and water together in a small bowl.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the egg mixture and beat for 1 minute more. Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear into the dough. Don't work the dough much once the flour is incorporated. If the dough comes together but some dry crumbs remain in the bottom of the bowl, stop the mixer and finish blending the ingredients with a rubber spatula or your hands.
Divide the dough in half. Working ,,~th one half at a time, put the dough between two large sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap. Using your hands, flatten the dough into a disk, then grab a rolling pin and roll out the dough, turning it over frequently so that the paper doesn't cut into it, until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Leave the dough in the paper and repeat with the second piece of dough. Transfer the wrapped dough to a baking sheet or cutting board (to keep it flat) and refrigerate or freeze it until it is very firm, about 2 hours in the refrigerator or about 45 minutes in the freezer. The rolled-out dough can be wrapped airtight and stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months. Just thaw the dough enough to cut out the cookies and go on from there.
Getting ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
Peel off the top sheet of wax paper from one piece of dough and, using a 2-inch round cookie cutter-a scalloped cutter is nice for these-cut out as many cookies as you can. If you want to have a peekaboo cutout, use the end of a piping tip to cut out a very small circle from the centers of half the cookies. Transfer the rounds to the baking sheets, leaving a little space between the cookies. Set the scraps aside-you can combine them with the scraps from the second disk and roll and cut more cookies.
Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 11 to 13 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly golden, dry and just firm to the touch. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to room temperature.
Repeat with the second disk of dough, making sure to cool the baking sheets between batches. Gather the scraps of dough together, press them into a disk, roll them between sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, then cut and bake.

If you'd like to make sandwich cookies, place the jam in a small saucepan or in a microwaveable bowl and stir in the 1 teaspoon water. Bring to a boil over low heat or in the microwave. Let the jam cool slightly, then turn half of the cookies flat side up and place about '/2 teaspoon of the jam in the center of each cookie; sandwich with the remaining cookies.
Just before serving, dust the cookies lightly with confectioners' sugar.

If you want to see how all the other TWD bakers did, hop over to the TWD site and check out the blog roll!

Next week: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies on pages 146-147

Rome

No TWD for me this week and the next few weeks, I'm traveling. Our trip started last Friday when we left for Rome. For us (H. and I) it was the our first visit, K. had been here before. We have visited a lot of the city's high lights, like Galleria Boghese, Sistene Chapel, Pantheon Colosseum, Trevi Fountian, the Spanish Steps etc. But also left a few for a future visit.
For H. and me both the Galleria Boghese was the most beautiful thing we visited, loved the statues by Bernini there!

Trevi Fountain

And than there was the food of course, great pastas, pizzas and desserts, wow, we really have to come back.

Tomorrow we will leave by train to Civitaveccchia, where we will board the Carnival Splendor for our 16 day Rome to Ft. Lauderdale cruise.

On the way we will visit Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, Funchal (Madeira) and St. Maarten. If I have access to the internet I'll keep you up to date!

TWD: Lenox Almond Biscotti

Gretchen of Canela & Comino picked this weeks Tuesday with Dorie recipe, she picked Lenox Almond Biscuits which made me very exited.
I know biscotti from my visits to Starbucks when on vacation in the US. I love them and always wanted to give them a try.

They weren't hard to make, although I had to double the time for the first bake. I expected that the logs would spread quite a bit, my sheet pan isn't very wide so I bought an extra one. Glad I did because I could never had fit 2 logs on the one sheet pan I have.
On one sheet pan I put the biscotti's cut side down, on the other I stood them up as Dorie suggested, it didn't make much of a difference taste wise.
I used polenta instead of cornmeal, cornmeal isn't very common on this side of the pond. I'll try to get some next time I make this recipe again. It left a bit of gritty texture. Apart from that I think this is my favorite Dorie recipe so far. Great flavor, nice and crisp, love the almond flavor! Next time I'll try some pistachios or macadamias, or a mix. Also I will do the second bake on 300 F and for a little longer, the ones on the dark sheet pan went a little too fast.

Want to see how the other bakers did? Look at the TWD site. Want to join us? Hurry up this is the last month you can!