Earlier this week I was asked to bake this dessert. This is actually a traditional sweet in Transylvania, no matter where you go, you can find it in bakeries, grocery stores and almost every house during winter holidays. It was my paternal grandmother's favorite recipe.
The funny thing is, I got a call from my brother, asking me to bake snow crescents till Sunday, to send it to my niece who's studying in Budapest. My brother is usually baking these but they had a weekend getaway planned for months and due to lack of time, I am the backup plan in this equation now. I can't say no to him, so there I was with a task I had to do.
Trying out new recipes is something I often do, but this was more than that. Here failure was not an option, the outcome had to be acceptable at least. No pressure, huh?
The funny thing is that I have my maternal grandmother's cooking book, and she has the recipe of snow crescents, but back in her days, every recipe had pork fat. I never use pork fat for baking, only the best quality butter, so I had to look for a different recipe online. The internet is flooded with all kinds of recipes, so it took a couple of minute to find one I liked. Obviously I had to tailor it to my taste, but the basic concept was good. The original recipe can be found here.
Let's get to it, shall we?
First place all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and the egg yolks, add to the mix. Cut the butter in small pieces, add to the mix and knead till you get a non sticky dough. I was lazy to take out the dough mixer and did it by hand again.
Now comes the tricky part. The recipe says roll out the dough and cut out the circles. Easy peasy, nothing more simple right?
Rolling out the dough was the easy part. Getting the necessary thickness was a different thing as the recipe did not say anything about how thick or thin the dough has to be. So what do you do in this case? Make a decision and do your best, which is exactly what I did.
So the circles were cut out, I put a little jam on the middle of each and started rolling them up.
And this is what I got after rolling them up. Does this look good to you? Well, even with a large dose of benevolence, I cannot say this is acceptable. It was obvious that the dough wasn't thin enough and the jam was too much. Regardless, it was done, so I put the tray in a preheated oven and baked for 20 minutes at 180掳C. The result? Beyond horrible 馃槀 I hate using gifs in my post, but if I were to use one, I'd choose the one with hiding behind the couch for sure.
So what do you do in cases like this? Did I tell you that failing was not an option today? Yes, I did. So what does Erikah do in cases like this? Fake it till you make it! What else? 馃槅 This is a general rule in the kitchen by the way! 馃槑 In my kitchen at least, but don't tell anyone, ok?
Good thing this was just 20% of the dough, so I still had the majority to try to make something acceptable out of it.
This was the second dough sheet rolled out. Can you see the pattern beneath it? That is how thin this was.
I'm not saying this batch was perfect, but compared to the previous one, it was way better.
After taking them out of the oven, comes the icing on the top.
The outcome may not look good but it tastes good and that's what it counts. I like this recipe and most likely this will not be the last batch I baked.
All in all, the first tray was a failure, but still edible. I'm glad I was able to save the day and learnt something new as well.
So, who wants snow crescents? 馃槀
If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:
