Chocolate-dippped hazelnut cookies

A colleague of mine brought for her birthday chocolate-dipped hazelnut cookies in the shape of triangles: they were soft, a bit crunchy, I loved them and the mix chocolate-hazelnut. She kindly shared her recipe with me and I adapted it a bit (some more chocolate and ground hazelnuts :-p ).

I also made the mistake of not letting the cookies cool down entirely before dipping them in chocolate: the first ones broke so I had to instead coat them with melted chocolate, which resulted in overall more chocolate. It tasted just as great but the cookies did look as elegant.

Enjoy and thank you Jenny!

Recipe for an oven-sized plate (about 40 cookies)

Base dough:
225 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
100 g sugar
1 pack vanilla sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp water
100 g butter (room T)

Spread:
150 g butter
150 g sugar
2 packs vanilla sugar
3 tbsp water
200 g ground hazelnuts
100 g slivered or chopped hazelnuts

Extra:
3 tbsp apricot jam
200 g dark chocolate

In a bowl mix all ingredients for the base dough into a homogenous dough. Roll it out onto an oven-sized plate (approx 40x30cm) lined with parchment paper.
Spread the apricot jam on the base dough.

In a saucepan put butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and water. Heat it up until the butter melts. Add hazelnuts, mix, and let it cool down. Spread the hazelnut mix on the dough.

Bake in the oven 25 min at 180 C.

Cut out triangles with about 8 cm sides (I make 8 cm squares and then cut them in two along the diagonal). Let the cookies cool down entirely (> 1 hr).
Dip both ends of the triangle in melted chocolate, let them dry, and enjoy.

Crostata (Italian jam tart)

It's been a while since I posted my last recipe: I moved (again) to a new city and had to find ingredients and arrange my kitchen and schedule to bake again :-)

So I'm back with a quick and easy recipe to start with: a crostata alla marmellata di albicocche, which is a typical Italian dry pie or tart with apricot jam. It's great for breakfast, as snack, and with coffee and tea in the afternoon. Plus you can keep it for a few days, it won't go bad or dry, as it is already dry!

Crostata (Italian jam tart)
recipe for a 23 cm tart pan


250 g flour
1 pinch salt
150 g butter
1 egg
100 g sugar
zest of 1 lemon
200-300 g apricot jam

In a bowl whisk egg, sugar and lemon zest together. In another one mix flour and salt, add butter, and mix by hand making making sure it is well mixed and crumbly. Make a hole in the middle and add the egg mix, mix fast into a dough. Flatten the dough a bit into a disk, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Butter and flour a tart pan. Roll out 3/4 of the dough into a disk, transfer it to the tart pan, and prick the bottom of the dough with a fork. Cover the dough with apricot jam. Fold out the remaining 1/4 dough, cut 1 cm-wide bands, and cover the tart with the dough bands making a criss-cross. Bake the tart 20-25 min at 200 C.