Baking with Marianne

A slice of Prinzregententorte from Café Erbshäuser.

In the last ten days I made 25 different kinds of Christmas cookies. You might expect that I got tired of making Christmas cookies but that is not the case. I am loving it and I also love sharing my cookies with others. On the weekend I visited a reception center and gave 250 of my homemade Christmas cookies to unaccompanied minor refugees. It was a very emotional moment meeting young teenagers from Afghanistan, Eritrea or Tunisia who fled to Europe by themselves. These young people are lonely, helpless, their future remains uncertain in a foreign country and many of them are traumatized from their long journey to Europe. In such a situation cookies do not help (at all) but I wanted to show these teenagers that they are welcome and that there are strangers that care about them.


I have a few Christmas cookie recipes that I made for these strong and brave teenagers and I want to sharethe recipes in the next few days. But today I want to share a cake recipe that I make every single year during the holiday season. It is a rosemary mousse cake with a baked apple purée and a shortcrust cookie bottom. I love the pairing of rosemary and apples and it is a wonderful change of the classic combination of apples and cinnamon. Ever since I made the recipe by the pâtissier Matthias Ludwigs for the first time a few years ago I make the rosemary mousse cakes at least three times every Christmas sesaon. 

Notes: 

There will be some leftover shortcrust dough. You can freeze the leftover dough. I usually use the leftover dough in order to make some simple Christmas cookies which I decorate with chocolate. 

You can also prepare the cakes ahead of time. The shortcrust cookies last up to two weeks in an airtight container and the rosemary mousse can be prepared a few days ahead of time. 

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INGREDIENTS

Rosemary Mousse

2 g gelatin

100 ml milk (full-fat)

30 g granulated sugar

3 rosemary needles (roughly chopped)

20 g almond flour

1 egg white (30 g)

125 g heavy cream

Shortcrust Cookies

115 g unsalted butter (cut in cubes)

100 g powdered sugar

1 egg (medium)

250 g all-purpose flour

Baked Apples Purée

2 tart apples

70 g granulated sugar

1 small branch of rosemary

Equipment

Six hemisphere silicon moulds (6 cm Ø )

A good kitchen scale

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DIRECTIONS

Rosemary Mousse

Mix gelatin with 1 tablespoon of cold water in a small saucepan. Let it stand for 10 minutes.

Combine milk, 10 g of granulated sugar, rosemary needles and almond flour in a small saucepan. Boil up the mixture and then set aside. Let the mixture infuse for 10 minutes (cover your saucepan while infusing).

Heat the gelatin gently and pour it over the rosemary milk mixture and stir well. Strain the rosemary milk through a fine strainer in order to remove the almond flour and rosemary needles.

Beat the egg white until almost stiff. Add gradually the remaining sugar (20 g) to the egg white and beat until stiff.

Whisk heavy cream until creamy.

Fold in egg white and whipped cream to the rosemary milk mixture.

Fill the rosemary mousse into hemisphere molds (6 cm Ø ). Freeze the mousse cakes for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Shortcrust Cookies

Mix butter and powdered sugar. Add the egg and mix until all ingredients are well combined. Add the flour and knead to a dough quickly. Wrap the dough into clingwrap and let the dough rest for 1 hour in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 180 °C.

On a floured surface or between two parchment papers roll out the dough until 2 to 3 mm thick. Cut our circles (6 cm Ø ). I use a wavy-shaped cookie cutter.

Transfer the cookies onto a baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies for 8 to 10 minutes until the edges are slightly golden in color.

Baked Apples Purée

Peel and core apples; cut each apple into 8 wedges.

Caramelize sugar in a oven safe pan until it has a dark and amber color. Take the pan from the heat. Add the apple wedges to the caramelized sugar. Let it infuse for 2 minutes and then mix. Add the rosemary branch. Cover the pan with a lit or aluminium foil and cook the apples for 30 to 40 minutes or until the apples are very soft in the oven at 160 °C. Remove the rosemary branch and let the apples cool. Purée apples. 

Assembling

Generously spread the baked apples purée on top of the cookies. Unmould the frozen rosemary mousse cakes and place them on top of the cookies. Let the cakes defrost for 30 minutes.

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On my 11th birthday I received my first adult baking book and this marked the beginning of making German cakes and torten for my family. One of the first recipes that I made from this book was "Gedeckter Apfelkuchen".  It is a "covered" cake with a delicious apple, almond and raisin filling which is very similar to an apple strudel filling. For me this apple cake is a very typical German cake; it's a cake that you find in every German pastry shop. I remember when I was little my family and I visited museums on Sundays and occasionally we went to the pastry shop after our museum visits in order to get some slices of cake for afternoon tea. I always chose a slice of Prinzregententorte but my dad chose almost every time a slice of "Gedeckter Apfelkuchen" and I always managed to sneak a little bit of my dad's apple slice.



This cake is one of my all time favorite apple cakes - besides my beloved Saturday Oatmeal Apple Cake of my mom. Ever since I made the cake for the very first time I make the "Gedeckter Apfelkuchen" every single year. The cake is such a beautiful rich and delicious apple cake which is so comforting for the colder months of the year. 

• 50 g hazelnut flour
• 200 g all-purpose flour
• 125 g unsalted cold butter (cut in cubes)
• 75 g granulated sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 egg yolk

• 50 g raisins
• 1 tablespoon of rum
• 375 g tart apples
• 45 g almond slivers (toasted)
• 25 g granulated sugar

• 50 g confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of apple juice or water
• 2 tablespoons of  almond slivers (toasted)

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• Knead hazelnut flour, all-purpose flour, butter, granulated sugar, salt and  egg yolk to a dough. Wrap the dough into clingwrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. 
• For the apple filling wash the raisins in hot water. In a small bowl let the raisins soak in rum. 
• Peel and core the apples and cut them into small cubes (about 4 cm). 
•  Mix apple cubes, rum soaked raisins, almond slivers and sugar in a bowl.
• Preheat the oven to 200°C. 
• Line the bottom of your springform pan with parchment paper and grease and flour your pan. 
• On a floured surface roll out 2/3 of the dough into a circle (the circle should be bigger than the springform). Gently lay the dough into the cake pan.
• Place the apple filling into the pan. 
• Roll out the remaining dough to a circle and lay the circle on the top of the apple filling, Press the edges together to seal the dough. 
• Bake the apple cake for 35 to 40 minutes. If the top of the cake gets too brown cover the cake  with aluminium foil. I usually cover the cake with aluminium foil after 30 minutes.
• Mix confectioners' sugar and apple juice or water. While the cake is still warm brush the top of the cake with icing and sprinkle with toasted almond shivers.

Before 2014 comes to an end - at least in my part of the world it is still 2014 - I want to share the different kinds of cookies that I made this Christmas season. I wrote a post about my Christmas baking last year and it is fun to look back at it.  As much as I like sharing recipes with you my dear readers, this blog is also my baking diary. Maybe one day I lose interest in baking which I cannot imagine at the moment and then I can look back at the recipes that I made over the years and I might be astonished what a strange baking  passion I once had.

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This year I made 27 different kind of Christmas cookies. Besides Christmas cookies I also made a lot of Lussekatter which are sweet saffron buns which are traditionally eaten on December 13th in Sweden and these buns are one of my all time favorite Christmas food. I also made a few Swedish Christmas Spice Cakes.
I wish I could tell you the exact number of cookies I made this year but I am afraid that you have to be patient. I counted every single cookie that I made but as I write this post I cannot find my cookie statistic notes which makes me a little bit mad. I know that I kept my notes on my desk but somehow my notes disappeared or are hiding in a cookbook. As soon as I find my cookie notes I will update this post. But I can tell you one thing: I made more than 2000 Christmas cookies (last year I made 1298 cookies) this year. I do not know if I am proud of it or if I am embarrassed about it. I tend to the latter one because I think people must think I am meshuge. Maybe I am.

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My dear readers I wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2015 be filled with lots of delicious cakes and cookies, wonderful moments, love and health!
Thank you for reading my blog.
Marianne
xxx