Cooking With Hanzipan

Bread & Honey has a recipe for Austrian Jam Cookies that I wanted to try and I’m oh so glad I did. These cookies combine some warm almondy, vanilla flavor with lava hot jam when you pull them out of the oven and pop them directly into your mouth. That almond flavor makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

There are two things I like about this recipe: 1. that it’s written with a vegan alternative, even though I didn’t use it… and 2. that the dough didn’t need to be refrigerated and it was really REALLY easy to make. I’m going to make my comments on the recipe in italics, the parenthesied bits were already there from the ladies over at Bread & Honey.

Austrian Jam Cookies
from Bread & Honey

1 cup margarine or butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
2 eggs or egg replacer “eggs”
2 tsps vanilla extract (or almond extract, or both) I did 1.25 tsps vanilla + .75 tsps almond… yes I eyeballed it.
jam (or filling of your choice) I used strawberry preserves from trusty Trader Joes
slivered almonds (optional) I rolled them in almond meal

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, preferably with an electric mixer, beat margarine or butter, sugar, eggs, and extract(s) until smooth and creamy. Sift flour in 1 cup at a time. Roll dough into balls. Roll in slivered almonds (optional). Place on cookie sheet and thumbprint each cookie. Scoop jam into dented center (I find it best to use a small kid’s spoon for this).
Bake for 12-14 minutes (I baked them for 15, it took a long time for those bottoms to even HINT at getting golden), until bottoms are golden. Remove from cookie sheet after a few minutes to cool.

I forgot to point out something I learned while making my last cupcakes. I’ve always struggled with getting eggs to room temperature. Besides putting them out 4 or 5 hours ahead of time, I’ve tried sticking them in my bra and tucking them around my sleeping cat(she nested them quite well). Then it occurred to me last night to check the Joy. All you need to do is put the eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 5 minutes and tada! They are 65-75 degrees! Magic!

I had this urge to make pink cupcakes so I took the White Christmas Cupcake recipe and Kid Simple Frosting from Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans. I feel guilty for posting so many of her recipes online, in case someone would have otherwise bought the book but can get all the recipes from me for free. I recommend you buy the book, it’s really really good. The cupcake recipe is on page 128 and the frosting is on 34. 

I also tried to pipe the frosting on the cupcakes using a pastry bag and tips I got from Big Lots. 

The results were difficult

The middle cupcake represents my anger at how unnecessarily difficult piping is.

I wanted to make breakfast this morning and I’d found bag of whole wheat flour lurking in the back of the kitchen cupboard that I wanted to use. I found this Whole Wheat Apple Muffin recipe on Smitten Kitchen that was calling my name and away I went! You can use the link to see Smitten’s recipe, below is my version (I needed to do some tweaking because I only had one tiny apple and I wanted to put some more things in them).

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

makes 15 muffins (weird number, huh?)

1 cup  whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar (I didn’t have any so I used raw cane sugar which is fairly coarse and works just fine)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg

1/4 cup applesauce (unsweetened works the best)
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 medium/large apple, cored, and coarsely chopped

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Grease and flour an 18 cup muffin tin and set aside.

Stir together white sugar, 1/4 cup of the brown sugar, butter and egg. Plop the apple sauce in then gently stir in the buttermilk until just combined. Toss in the baking soda, powder, salt and cinnamon (I forgot to do it in the batter so I just sprinkled it on the tops of the muffins which worked really well) and stir until combined. Add both flours and then toss in the chopped apple, walnuts and raisins, stirring until it’s all folded together and one big lumpy bowl of goodness. Pour into muffin tins, filling them 2/3 of the way. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon if you didn’t add it into the batter then sprinkle the rest (and maybe a touch more) of the brown sugar on top of the muffins. Stick them in the oven for 10 minutes then turn the heat down to 400 for another 7 minutes or until they pass the toothpick test. Allow to cool in the pans for about 10 minutes then transfer onto a wrack. Enjoy!