Select your favorite in advance
New Year is coming. Many meet him at the table, so it's time to choose a festive dessert. For example, you can bake a cake or cookies. Vokrug Sveta publishes simple recipes from the popular culinary blogger Irina Chadeeva's books Pirogovedenie and Pirogovedenie for Beginners.
Classic dark Christmas cupcake
Dark cane sugar or molasses, various types of raisins, cognac, sherry or dessert flavored wine are the main ingredients of a dark fruit cake.
Its festive flavor can be made richer and richer with the help of traditional Christmas spices such as cinnamon , clove and nutmeg. And don't forget the ground almonds, which make the cake more crumbly and brittle. You can choose dried fruits and candied fruits to your taste, the main rule – there should be a lot of them (by weight – no less than dough)!
Recipe
Ingredients< /strong>
For the dough:
4 eggs
200 g butter
150 g brown sugar
50 g dark brown sugar
250 g flour< br>50 g ground almonds
1/2 tsp spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves)
100 ml sweet nutmeg wine
Dried fruits, total 1 kg:
200 g light raisins
200 g dark raisins
150 g dried cranberries
150 g dried cherries
100 g candied lemon
100 g candied orange
100 g candied melon
Impregnation:
1 glass of sherry
Method of preparation:
Soak raisins in nutmeg overnight, preferably for several days.
Measure out the right amount of flour. From this amount, take a tablespoon and roll separately candied fruits and raisins.
Add two types of sugar to the softened butter and beat until the mass brightens.
Add one egg each time beating well. When adding the last egg, the mixture may begin to “ripple”, this is not scary.
Pour in the flour and mix thoroughly with a mixer. Add spices and almonds, mix more.
Pour in dried fruits – first raisins, then other stuff.
Divide the dough into greased and floured tins. Bake large muffins at 140-150 ° C for about two hours, small ones – one and a half.
Still hot soak the muffins with sherry.
Wait 10 minutes after soaking and put the muffins out of the molds on the wire rack . Cool, wrap in clingfilm, foil or paper and refrigerate for storage.
Once a week or two, you can take out cupcakes and soak with a spoonful of alcohol.
Read also
- Scallops, rooster, log: 3 simple recipes for the festive table that look like in an expensive restaurant
Quick Christmas cake with tangerines
This cake It smells like a Christmas tree and tangerines, spreading the best holiday scent from childhood around the house. And besides, it cooks very quickly. Although, unlike other Christmas cupcakes, it does not keep for a long time.
Recipe
Ingredients< /strong>
Dough:
150 g butter
125 g light brown sugar
3 eggs
125 g flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Filling:
2 tangerines
150 g dried dried fruits
2 tbsp. l. orange liqueur
20 g butter
1 tsp. sugar
Decoration:
1 st. l. powdered sugar
1 tbsp. l. fine sugar
A little egg white
A few sprigs of rosemary
A few tangerine slices
Zest of a lemon or orange
Form 10 × 20 cm
Preheat the oven to 180 ° C
Preparation method
Peel two tangerines, disassemble into slices and leave for an hour to dry the film on the slices.
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Soak dried fruits in liquor for 30–40 minutes.
Heat butter (20 g) in a frying pan over high heat, sprinkle with a teaspoon of sugar and put the slices to fry (a couple of minutes on each side). Remove hot slices to a plate to cool, and put dried fruits in liquor in a pan and heat until the liquor evaporates. Cool.
For the dough, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.
Add three eggs one at a time, beating until creamy each time.
Pour the flour sifted with baking powder, add the cooled dried fruits. Pay attention to the consistency of the dough & nbsp; – it should be quite thick, come off the spoon and fall in a large piece. If the dough is watery, just add flour.
Pour the dough into a greased and floured form, shifting the caramelized tangerines. Bake at 180 ° C for about an hour, check the readiness with a match (it should come out dry from the middle of the cake). Cool down.
To decorate, brush tangerine slices and rosemary sprigs with lightly beaten protein (a regular paint brush) and sprinkle with fine sugar. Spread over the cake, you can also add thinly sliced lemon or orange zest.
Note
* Use tangerines with strong partitions but no pits. The dense skin will not allow the slices to fall apart during caramelization and will retain the juice inside each slice.
** To get fine sugar, grind ordinary sugar in a mortar, not too finely.
Snow Cookies
In this test, only yolks are used, so the cookies are tender and crumbly, with a beautiful yellow color. Prepare the powdered sugar in advance so that it is well saturated with vanilla flavor. By the way, these cookies can be made quite tiny -one bite.
Recipe
Ingredients for 20 pieces
100 g butter
75 g powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
150 g flour
50 g starch
100 g powdered sugar with vanilla
Baking tray lined with baking paper.
Oven 200 °C
Cooking method
For the dough, place the softened butter, powder and egg yolks in a bowl. Beat with a fork or mixer until smooth and creamy.
Add flour with starch and quickly knead the dough. At first it will be lumpy, knead until the dough becomes homogeneous.
Take the dough with a teaspoon and roll into balls. Place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
Bake at 200°C for 12 minutes. Roll hot cookies in vanilla powder.
Note
* Cookies must be hot, then powdered sugar cooling forms a thin crust and does not crumble.
** To make vanilla powdered sugar, sprinkle the split vanilla pod with powdered sugar and leave for a day or two, stirring from time to time. If you don't have natural vanilla, add some vanillin or two packets of crushed vanilla sugar to the powdered sugar. You can store such powder in a tightly closed jar for as long as you like.
Photo: Eva Ziaťková/Alamy/Legion Media, from the books Pie Science and Pie Science for Beginners.
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Material published in December 2016, partially updated in December 2022