Berner Nusstaeschen (Bern Nut Pocket Cookies)

R

richard-in-cincy

Well-known member
from "Grossmutters Weihnactliche Backstube" (Grandma's Christmas Bakery)

45 cookies

Dough

300 gr. flour

225 gr. sugar

1 packet of vanilla sugar

1 egg

200 gr. butter, frozen or cold

Sieve the flour onto a board, sprinkle with sugars, make a well and add the egg. Grate the butter over the flour, then knit into a dough with your hands. Wrap tightly in foil, refrigerate for 1 hour.

Filling

50 gr. each of walnuts and hazelnuts

50 ml of whipping cream

50 gr. raw tannenbaum honey (pine honey from the Black Forest)

1 egg, separated

2 tbls. whipping cream

decorative sugar

Melted chocolate for decoration

Grind the nuts in a nut grinder, combine in a saucepan with the cream and honey, while stirring, heat to combine. Do not boil. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Roll the dough out 1/2 cm on a floured board, cut circles from dough. Brush circles with beaten egg white. Add a tsp of filling, fold dough over filling and seal into half circle shapes. Place on parchment lined baking sheets.

Beat the egg yolk and cream together and paint the cookies. Sprinkle with decorative sugar crystals.

Bake for 10-12 minutes at 180C. (375F)

Cool cookies on a rack. Melt chocolate and place in a pastry bag or parchment cone, drizzle cookies with melted chocolate.

Enjoy!

 
Question regarding nut grinder

I have heard that ther is a big difference in using a grinder as opposed to a processor or blender. I also remember a friend's Albanian mother-in-law insisting walnuts had to be hand-crushed for baklava but I don't remember how she did it. Is this all to do with the oil & heat?

 
Yes!

The hand cranked nut grinder doesn't overheat the nuts, nor does it pulverize some of them into nut dust. The outcome is uniform, evenly chopped up nuts. We never put nuts in the food processor.

However, for small batches of things, I get my big Henkel Chef's knife and whack at them on cutting board. Left hand on the tip, right hand going up and down.

 
I was always amused because my friend wasn't much of a baker

and her mother-in-law mailed her freezers full of properly crushed walnuts. I would have been happy to take them off her hands. Will have to get a nut grinder. I hate getting them powdery in the processor & am never happy with trying to get them uniformly finely chopped with a knife.

 
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