29 November 2011

Nougat cranberry moons

I know, I know. I promised and I didn't deliver. Sorry.
It's been quite crazy around here for the last two weeks. I think we are all quite familiar with Christmas stress. Baking biscuits, buying presents, rushing to choir practice, drinking mulled wine (ok, not so stressful I admit), making advent calenders, buying sweets for St Nicolaus Day etc. Add to that the usual everyday crazyness and, well, there you are.
I spent last weekend at my mum's place and we made 7 different types of biscuits. Will definitely try to post most of them. But for now: Babysteps. Here's the recipe for some delicious nougat cranberry moons, a nice twist on the good old vanilla moons.

 

It's not an extremly quick recipe as the dough needs to rest in the fridge for some time but it's not a complicated one either. You could just go on and watch a film while the dough is resting. We watched "Eclipse", the third part of the Twilight saga, and mocked it mercilessly. Lots of fun. Though the amount of fun we had was propably mostly due to the bottles of Christmas beer we had opened earlier that evening.

 

We were huge fans. Obviously.


When they came out of the oven, the moons were dipped in icing sugar, a process during which some of them mysteriously found their way into our mouths.


And that was when the Christmas magic started for real. Foodfoodfoodfoodfood.

Nougat cranberry moons
(Recipe adapted from Living at home, November 2006)

50 g/0.3 cups dried cranberries
50 g/0.25 cups nougat
75 g/0.3 cups butter, soft
170 g/1.7 cups flour
salt
130 g/1 cup icing sugar
60 g/0.5 cups ground almonds
1 egg
1 vanilla pod

In a large bowl, combine the nougat and the butter. Finely chop the cranberries (I put them in the blender), then add them, the flour, salt, almonds, egg, and 30 g of the icing sugar to the nougat butter cream. Knead into a smooth dough, form into two rolls (about 2.5 cm/1 inch in diameter), wrap them in cling film and refridgerate for at least two hours.

Preheat the oven to 180° C/355° F. Take the dough out of the fridge, unwrap and cut it into slices (about 1 cm/0.5 inches thick). Form the slices into moons and put them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Pop them in the oven and bake for 12-14 minutes.

Cut open the vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds and combine them with the remaining icing sugar. 

When the moons are done, let them cool for a few minutes, then cover them with the sugar vanilla mixture (dipping works best) and leave to cool.

And don't throw away the empty vanilla pod but cook it for a few minutes with some milk, then add some cinnamon, a pinch of sugar and some pepper. Remove the pod before pouring the mixture into a cup. Drink. It's amazing.

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