Party Biscuits

Ideal, delicious, simple party biscuits. For any party these biscuits are perfect, children adore them and in a few minutes they are gone. They are a real attraction with their looks, and their taste even more, as you decide on your favourite taste yourself. In this recipe I will describe you two different types of cream for filling, so choose whether you will fill the biscuits with a sort of milk cream like nougat, strawberries, or coconut chocolate or whether you want to use dark chocolate which contains 50 % of cocoa and more.

INGREDIENTS FOR CREAM :

100 ml of cream

270 g of nougat chocolate

FOR DECORATION ( not obligatory)

different decoration pearls, balls, butterflies,

chocolate granules, coloured granules, sprays

coconut – ground, nuts, etc. …

INGREDIENTS FOR DECORATION :

80 g of white chocolate

80 g of milk chocolate

80 g of filled chocolate (to your taste)

INGREDIENTS FOR CREAM WITH DARK CHOCOLATE CONTAINIG 50% AND MORE COCOA :

200 g of dark chocolate

100 ml of cream

OTHER INGREDIENTS :

500 g of mini biscuits ( e.g. Leibniz )

PREPARATION :

1 . put the cream and chocolate in a bowl and melt the chocolate completely, while stirring occasionally …

2 . put the cream aside to cool down, but NOT in the fridge!!! If it is too hot at your place, you can put it into the fridge before use, but only for 5 – 10 minutes …

3 . whisk the cooled cream and fill a decorating bag (or freezer bag) and cut off a corner of the bag …

4 . put some cream in the middle of a mini biscuit, put a toothpick in the middle of the biscuit and cover the cream with another mini biscuit …

5 . do this until all the cream has been used …

6 . put the filled biscuits into the fridge for some 30-45 minutes to cool down and to enable the cream to harden well before decorating …

7 . melt each chocolate separately on steam or in microwave …

8 . dip the cooled biscuits in the melted chocolate to the half and line them on a tray covered with parchment paper. (if you want to decorate your biscuits with coconut or different decorations, do that as soon as you dip them in the chocolate, and after that put the biscuits on the parchment paper.)

9 . put the decorated biscuits in the fridge and take them out before serving so that cream and chocolate do not start melting in summer heat …

NOTES AND ADVICE :

When prepared and decorated biscuits harden in the fridge, you can put them one on the other, but be careful when serving – they must not be put one on the other, when you serve them.

It is not obligatory to use 3 different types of chocolate for decoration, you can use two or just one type, but be careful that you have 240 g of chocolate in total at the end.

Different decoration like granules, butterflies, coconut etc.… are not obligatory for decoration, it is sufficient just to dip the biscuits into the chocolate.

Choose the chocolate you want to use for making cream, to your taste, but be careful about the ratio of cream and chocolate and check the cream you want to make, in the recipe to be sure about the precise ratio.

If it is summer time and your cream is not hard enough, put it in the fridge just for 5 – 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it, so it does not harden too much and you can fill the biscuits easily.

   

If you like recipes from my blog, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for free

…. thank you for trusting me your Meri




Plum Cake with Pudding

This is my sister’s favourite cake, she eats the whole cake herself, literally just by herself, of course during the day, not at once. This is one of famous cakes made in Germany where it is called Zwetschgenkuchen, some people call it Pflaumenkuchen, too. There plum cake is made with shortcrust pastry and there are pastry crumbs on the plums, I would say it is a typical German Zwetschgenkuchen, but there are variations, as this plum cake of mine. I prefer this version, which is faster, too.

INGREDIENTS :

FOR PASTRY :

270 g of sugar

5 eggs( L )

525 g of flour

1 package of baking powder

1 package of vanilla sugar

270 g . of butter (half melted ) + for buttering the baking tray

FOR FILLING :

2 eggs

150 g of sugar

2 packages of vanilla pudding

ca. 2 kg of pitted plums

750 g . of cottage cheese ( 15 – 20 % fat or Topfen )

FOR CRUMBS :

1 – 2 tea spoons of cinnamon

360 g . of flour

250 g . of sugar

225 g . of butter (half melted)

PROCEDURE :

1 . wash and pit the plums …

2 . turn the oven on to 180 degrees and let it heat well …

3 . butter a big baking tray ( 38 x 33 ), flour it and tap out the excess from the tray…

4 . preparation for crumbs – put all ingredients in a bowl and mix them lightly with a fork, with your hands or with a mixer – attachment for making pastry or as I did in the video. Be careful when making crumbs – do not make a piece of pastry instead of crumbs !!!

5 . put the ready-made crumbs into the fridge while you prepare the pastry …

6 . mix eggs and butter shortly (ca. 2 – 3 min .) using the attachment for biscuits. Then add all other ingredients and make pastry without lumps …

7 . put the pastry into the buttered baking tray with a spoon and spread it evenly, then leave it aside for a while…

8 . put all the ingredients for filling into a bowl and mix them well …

9 . put the filling on the pastry, spoon by spoon, and spread it lightly and evenly over the pastry …

10 . stick the plums into the filling vertically, one beside another and sprinkle them with crumbs abundantly …

11 . put the cake into the oven heated to 180 degrees and bake for 40 to 45 minutes …

12 . let the cake cool and then enjoy each bit of it …

NOTES AND ADVICE :

When preparing crumbs with a mixer, be careful not to knead pastry; so switch the mixer on at the smallest speed and mind the crumbs.

If you prepare crumbs with your hands DO NOT KNEAD with your palms, but just with your fingers, in this way you will have better control that you really make crumbs and not pastry.

To all beginners I would suggest working with a fork as the best option, in this way you can control how to make the best crumbs.

With light movements, light squeezing and mixing with a fork you will get excellent crumbs with no fear that pastry will be done instead. But you have to be careful with fork, too!

Cinnamon is not obligatory in this cake, but it really goes fantastically with plums.

In the covered baking tray (with a foil) you can keep the cake fresh and tasty for the next several days.

If there is a rest of crumbs, it is not a big deal – do not throw them away, because they can be used again. Put the rest of the crumbs into a freezer bag and put them into the freezer. When needed, when you make any other cake, muffins etc. … you can use them in the way that you put the frozen crumbs on a cake or muffins and you get something special … I always have frozen crumbs in the freezer, so when I need them, I have ready-made ones.

  

If you like recipes from my blog, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for free

…. thank you for trusting me your Meri

 




Nectarines Stuffed with Amarettini Biscuits

This is a really quick and simple recipe. Literary, in five minutes nectarines are stuffed and ready for degustation. If you want to try this recipe, it is obligatory to look for Amarettini biscuits, because they have that specific intense almond flavour, I would say that Amarettini biscuits remind me of the flavour of marzipan.

INGREDIENTS :

2 cans of nectarines ( 825 g each)

70 g of Amarettini biscuits + a few biscuits for decoration

200 ml of cream

200 g of Greek yogurt

1 tea spoon of whipped cream fix

PREPARATION :

1 . drain the nectarines and flatten their bottoms with a knife so they can stand straight …

2 . chop Amarettini biscuits …

3 . mix the cream by half (not completely) and add it to the yogurt together with biscuits and cream fix, then mix just for a few seconds …

4 . put the prepared filling into a decorating bag (you can use an ordinary freezer bag, too), cut off a somewhat bigger corner of the bag and fill the nectarines abundantly…

5. decorate the stuffed nectarines with one biscuit each …

ADVICE :

Cream fix is not obligatory, if you do not want to use it.

If you do not add cream fix, mix the cream a few seconds longer.

I would recommend you to use Amarettini biscuits in this recipe or possibly some other biscuits having an intense flavour of almonds, cinnamon or marzipan.

In this recipe you can use ordinary set yogurt or Greek yogurt as I did.

Instead of nectarines you can use canned peaches or apricots, too

 

If you like recipes from my blog, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for free

…. thank you for trusting me your Meri




Sour Cherry Strudel

Easy to prepare is this juicy, tasty sour cherry strudel. The whole kitchen smells great when it is baked, but there is a failure, it disappears at light speed from the tray, while still hot. We simply do not have time to wait for it to cool, although I like it much better when it is cold, but it is really impossible to wait that long.

INGREDIENTS :

4 eggs

600 g of set yoghurt

1 package of baking powder

500 g of ready-made phyllo dough sheets

750 g of jarred sour cherries

2 packages of vanilla sugar

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of semolina

1 cup of oil

YOU USE CUPS OF 250 ml .

PREPARATION :

1 . heat the oven to 200 degrees …

2 . beat the egg whites and vanilla sugar into hard snow and leave the mixture aside for a while …

3 . beat the yolks and sugar to make a nice cream, then add yoghurt, oil, semolina and baking powder and mix well …

4 . add egg whites into the stuffing and stir with light circular movements, till the mixture gets homogenous and lumps completely disappear …

5 . drain the sour cherries in a colander …

6 . put the phyllo dough sheets on the worktop, coat a sheet with the stuffing, then put another sheet then stuffing again and after that cherries …

ORDER OF LAYING: sheet – stuffing, sheet – stuffing, sheet – cherries

7 . roll the strudel (it is not important whether according to width or length, it depends on the size of your tray)

8 . coat the rolled strudels with the rest of the stuffing or pour it over them …

9 . put the strudels into the oven preheated to 200 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 180 and continue baking the strudels for 35 – 45 more minutes, it depends on your oven. When they take on gold, brown colour, the strudels are ready.

10 . if wished, you can sprinkle the strudels with powdered sugar or you can simply leave them as they are…

 

If you like recipes from my blog, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for free

…. thank you for trusting me your Meri