{12} Pignoli

We’ve made it to the end of another instalment of the 12 Days of Baking! This cycle has gone on a little longer than I planned and well into the New Year, but I’d rather that than pile on the stress of trying to do everything by Christmas Eve. Also, spreading things out gives friends and family a sporting chance of being able to enjoy what I bake, rather than turning it into an endurance event whereby cookies need to be eaten as fast as they are made…

To bring things to a conclusion, we’re finishing with a classic Italian cookie: pignoli.

These morsels are delicious almond cookies, crisp and lightly golden on the outside and with a soft and chewy centre. They are generously coated in pine nuts which toast lightly in the oven. They are simultaneously simple and luxurious. I love their festive appearance which will look good on any cookie tray, but they are equally at home any time of the year with a cup of good coffee for a quiet moment of reflection.

Pignoli originate from the island of Sicily in Southern Italy, where both almonds and pine nuts feature in local cookies. They’ve also made their way to the US, where there are also a favourite in Italian-American families at Christmas.

While my festive baking this year has included some complex bakes, pignoli are (comparatively) easy. One bowl, no resting, no chilling, just roll, coat in nuts and bake. And this is a delightful recipe as it gives you a lot of deliciousness for minimal effort.

When it comes to pignoli recipes, many are based on almond paste, which is mixed with sugar and egg whites. Almond paste is a 50/50 mixture of almonds and sugar, and not the same thing as marzipan here in Britain (marzipan here is typically 25/75 almonds to sugar). However, almond paste is not an ingredient that is easily available in stores here, so I’ve come up with an easy recipe that just uses ground almonds and sugar. It gets us to the same place, and I think it is easier – there is no need to break down a lump of almond paste into a smooth mixture.  Essentially I’m offering a route that involves less work, getting you more quickly to delicious pignoli.

However, even if there is less work involved, we need to be honest. These are clearly luxury cookies. A good amount of almonds, and then lots and lots of pine nuts. This is not a cheap recipe, but hey, they are called pignoli and so pine nuts should be used generously. And you want them to taste of something. I tipped two large bags of pine nuts into a bowl for coating the cookies and assumed I had over-calculated. The rest could be toasted and sprinkled into a salad perhaps? But no. I think I ended up with about a dozen pine nuts left in the bowl at the end. So just a word of warning – get those nuts in, and don’t think you’ll be able to wing it with that half-used bag lurking in the baking cupboard.

If you want to play around with the flavours you can add lemon or orange zest, and they would still be pignoli. Or you could skip the pine nuts and use other nuts to coat the cookies – flaked almonds, or chopped hazelnuts, pistachios or cashews would all work – except that you’re then not making pignoli. They’ll still taste great, but they will be something else. This is, of course, a good way to make a batch of visually different cookies using one basic recipe (or if you ignored my warning and ran short of pine nuts…).

One final point worth knowing – there is no flour, butter or milk in pignoli so these little guys just happen to be naturally gluten and lactose-free. This makes them a great choice if you want to impress and you know someone who needs to avoid either in their diet.

To make Pignoli (makes around 20):

For the dough

• 2 large egg whites
• 175g ground almonds
• 100g icing sugar
• 100g granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

To decorate

• 200g pine nuts
• icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C (345°F) and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

2. In a large bowl, briefly whisk the egg whites until foamy. Add the rest of the dough ingredients and mix to a smooth dough. It should be sticky but you should be able to form it into balls. If too dry, add a little water. If too sticky, add a teaspoon each of ground almonds, granulated sugar and icing sugar and mix well.

3. Take a teaspoon of the dough (around 25g) and form into a ball. Roll in the pine nuts. Transfer to the baking sheet. Leave around 5cm between each cookie, and keep going until all the dough is used up.

4. Lightly press each cookie to flatten slightly, then bake for 15 minutes (turn the tray around half-way to get an even colour). When baked, remove from the oven, allow to cool on the tray. Lightly dust with icing sugar before serving.

{11} Bauernbrötchen

We’ve already had one culinary jaunt to Austria this year with our pumpkin seed crescent cookies, and we’re going back for our penultimate recipe: Bauernbrötchen which translates as “farmers rolls”. But plain and rustic little breads these certainly are not!

At first glance, these seem to be chocolate crinkle cookies. They look like they contain chocolate, they are white and have that distinctive cracked appearance. Have I just made some of those and called them Austrian?

Of course not! But maybe these are their ancestors from the old country? I did look to see if I could find out more about how these cookies got their name, but drew a blank. My first guess was that it is something to do with the fact they use a lot of nuts, and that nuts were prevalent on farms. Of course this theory fall down quickly – the recipe uses a lot of chocolate, which is historically a luxury ingredient. My second guess, which seems more likely, is that they have more than a passing resemblance to large loaves of Austrian rye bread which is coated in flour with decorative cuts. Which theory do you think is right? It’s got the be the second, right?

Anyway, the method and ingredients  for making these is very different from crinkle cookies. They are made mostly with ground nuts and grated dark chocolate, with just a little flour to hold everything together. So in my book, that makes them even better than crinkle cookies. They are rich but also substantial and taste very, very festive. They also skip spices or citrus flavours, so provide something different on a holiday cookie plate too. I also really like the random cracked appearance which is a real contrast to perfectly identical cookies.

For the nuts, I have used walnuts. These seem to be common in many recipes, and in my mind this is also a very Austrian ingredient. It features in Austrian baking, but there is also a giant walnut tree growing in the garden of the parents of an Austrian friend down near the Slovenian border. So in my head, they make a lot of stuff with walnuts there, and that was what I would do.

However, you can make some adjustments if you want (or depending on what you have to hand). Almonds, hazelnuts, cashews or pecans would all make fine substitutes, either on their own or in combination. I would steer clear of pistachios and pine nuts simply because their flavour would vanish in these cookies and they are are at the pricier end of the nut world.

There are also recipes (including on the Dr Oetker website) which use coconut. If you’re a coconut fan then I am sure this would work, but you may wish to use a mixture of coconut flour and coconut flakes as I can see the recipe remaining too moist otherwise. I’ve had past experience using using coconut flakes when I should have been using coconut flour. So take this with a warning that I have not tested this – if you want to have a go with coconut, do let me know how it works out.

You will see that some of the cookies have a lovely white appearance, while others are more mottled. This was due to oil from the nuts and chocolate coming to the surface during baking. It does not affect the taste in any way, but the easy way to fix this is double rolling. When you shape the cookies, you roll them into a ball, then roll them in icing sugar. Fill the whole tray, then roll each one again in icing sugar. This created a slightly thicker coating, and gives you that picture-perfect crinkle look.

I was pleased with how these turned out – they are pretty easy to make, and the only pain was grating the dark chocolate. With hindsight I might have done this in a food processor. I did it by hand, and chocolate on a grater goes crazy. It creates lots of static, with small pieces of chocolate flying everywhere. I’m not sure there is really anything you can to prevent this, but it is just useful to know so that you’re not wearing your best white clothes as you do this, and at least you are prepared for the mess. Good luck!

And finally, the taste test. The flavour is really good – in spite of containing a fair amount of sugar and chocolate, they are not particularly sweet. The flavour is delicious, rich and nutty. The combination of lots of walnuts with chocolate gives them what I think of as a very “central European flavour”. They also keep very well when stored in a tin. Indeed, I think they actually improve over a couple of days, which is helpful when the recipe makes 50!

To make Bauernbrötchen (makes around 50)

For the dough

• 3 medium eggs, separated
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 150g white caster sugar
• 250g ground nuts (traditionally walnuts)
• 160g grated dark chocolate
• 60g plain flour

To decorate

• icing sugar

1. Put the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla into a large bowl. Whisk until light and thick (around 3-4 minutes).

2. Fold in the ground nuts and grated chocolate. The mixture will seem very thick and dry.

3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until you reach soft peaks. Vigorously mix the egg whites into the main mixture until evenly combined. Finally stir in the flour – the mixture should be soft and slightly sticky. Cover and leave to rest overnight.

4. The next day, preheat the oven to 175°C (345°F) and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

5. Take generous teaspoons of the mixture (around 25g) and form into a ball. Roll in the icing sugar, then transfer to the baking sheet. Repeat until the tray is filled, leaving 5cm between each cookie to allow for spreading. At this point, you can re-roll each ball in icing sugar to get a good, even, thick coating.

6. Bake the cookies for 14 minutes, turning the tray half-way to get an even bake. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a moment (they are very soft when hot), then transfer to a cooking rack.