Bethmännchen by Alexander Klink via commons.wikimedia.org
Here’s a recipe for some nice German marzipan “cookies”. They’re not cookies in a traditional sense, but were always served to me as cookies, so I don’t know how to categorise them.
Ingredients
- 20g Flour
- 50g Icing sugar
- 50g dark chocolate
- 100g almonds
- 200g Marzipan paste
- 1 egg
Cookware you’ll need
- a bowl
- a metal bowl and/or a pot to melt the chocolate
- a mill
- baking sheet with parchment paper
Ok now begin…
- Split half of the almonds in two and save them for later. Mill the other half of the almonds. Make sure you handle them without their skin, otherwise pour boiling water over them and peel the skin off first. Mix and knead the milled almonds with the marzipan paste.
- Seperate an egg and save the yolk. Mix the rest with the marzipan paste.
- Add flour and icing sugar to the paste and knead again.
- After the “dough” has the right texture – it’s quite sticky – you should be able to form small balls out of it.
- You can think about pre-heating the oven to 130 °C at this point.
- Place the small balls on the baking sheet with parchement paper and add three of the saved almond halfs to each ball (see pic)
- Use the yolk and add a wee bit of water. Brush the balls with this egg paint.
- Now place them in the oven for 10-15 min. Make sure they do not bbecome to dark, that happens very, very easy!
- Now let them cool down (they become more stable the more they cool down, so be patient!)
- Melt the chocolate (you know how to melt chocolate: either in a bowl over hot water for better quality or be lazy and melt it directly in a pot).
- Now dip the balls into the molten chocolate to cover their bottom in a thin layer of chocolate. Cool down again and your’re finished! …hehe: “balls”!*
My grandma baked them traditionally for christmas and I think that’s the time most people eat them. They might be too “heavy” for warm summer days. Well, I can’t agree and christmas comes for sure this year anyway! …HAHA: “BALLS”!!
Btw. the picture above lacks the chocolate bottom. I putted the picture there with the intention to show how the almonds shall be placed…add the chocolate, it’s better, trust me!…no worries, you just mentioned balls as a recipe!
* thankful comments by a friend of mine
