Easter Egg Cookies

I picked the idea for these cookies on Youtube channel Yoyomax12. I completely changed the recipe, but the cookies turned out very tasty and adorable. And they are not just simple cookies. They are little gift boxes with a surprise inside. Treat your kids, friends or relatives with a great present for Easter! 

Easter Egg Cookies

Recipe

Cookies:
225g of butter or margarine
2 1\4 cups of AP flour
3\4 cups of cornflour
1 1\4 cups of icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tsp of lemon zest
1\4 tsp of salt
1\2 tsp of baking powder

Ganache:
200g of white chocolate
1\4 cup of cream

Glaze:
1 cup of icing (confectioner's) sugar 
2 tsp of milk
2 tsp of syrup
1 tsp of vanilla
different food colourings (I used paste)

Additionally:
Any sweets or chocolates which you want to put inside the cookies
Coloured sugar for decoration 

We will start with preparing ganache as it needs a few hours to set. Break chocolate into pieces and warm it together with cream to 40C over the bain-marie or in the microwave. If you use the microwave do it in 20 sec installments. Do not overheat as chocolate is very sensitive to high temperatures and burns easily. Mix till smooth and put in the fridge to set. After a few hours the ganache will become very thick, but that's exactly what we need.

Now let's make the cookies. Cream butter and icing sugar. Add egg yolks, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Mix together both flours, salt and baking powder. Add to the mixture and make the dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1 hour. After 1 hour roll the dough to 7 mm thick and cut shapes using egg-shape cookie cutter. If you do not have such a cutter you can cut an egg pattern from a piece of carton or very thick paper, put it on top of the dough and cut around using a sharp knife.

Then using a simple round cutter cut circles in half of the eggs. Like this:

Bake the cookies at 180C for about 15 minutes - until they turn lightly gold in colour. Cool them on a wire rack.

It's time to assemble and decorate. Take the cookie with the cut-out centre. Apply a little ganache to it and stick to the full-egg cookie. Like this:

Stick another cut-out centre cookie on top. Put your sweets or chocolates inside the hollow.

Now cover with the 'lid' of another full-egg cookie. Spread ganache evenly to smooth the edges.

Let ganache dry for about 1 hour before applying glaze.
For glaze mix all ingredients to form a smooth paste. If it's too thick add a bit more milk. If it's too runny add a bit more icing sugar. Divide into 4 parts and colour each with different food colourings. Spread some glaze on top of each 'egg'. Let dry completely.

Put the remaining glaze into zip-lock bags and cut very small holes (about 1 mm). Decorate as you like. I drew some patterns and then sprinkles coloured sugar on top. Here are some ideas for you:

By the way, depending upon the occasion you can make these cookies in different shapes: flowers for Mothers' day, teddy bears for children's parties, etc...

And now let's see which 'surprise' we've got inside. What has Easter bunny brought us?

Kransekake - Traditional Norwegian Cake

Kransekake is made of rings of chewy and delicious almond cookies.Norwegians bake these fir-tree-shape cakes on big occasions, for example Christmas or weddings. But when I got Kransekake pans as a present I could not wait till Christmas. I had to bake them now!

Yes, you will need special pans to make this wonderful treat. Last time I checked they were available on Lakeland.co.uk and Amazon.com (or your country's Amazon). They look like this:

And now let's get started. The recipe which I am using here was printed on the Kransekake pans packaging.

Kransekake - Traditional Norwegian Cake

Recipe

Dough:
450g of icing sugar (also known as confectioner's sugar)
500g of ground almonds
4 egg whites
1 tsp of baking powder

Icing:
150g of icing sugar
1 egg white
1 tsp of lemon juice

Slightly beat egg whites with a fork till foamy. Like this:

Mix icing sugar with ground almonds and baking powder. Add to egg whites and mix. The dough will be quite stiff, somewhat resembling pasta dough. While you are preparing the dough, boil water in a large saucepan. Put the bowl with the dough over your bain-marie and warm the dough till 40C (this is slightly warmer than your body temperature). You will need to stir the dough constantly to make sure it's warming up evenly. That's how it will look like:

Once the dough is warm remove it from the heat, cool to room temperature and put it in the fridge overnight. Next morning pinch pieces from the dough and roll them into long strips of about 1cm thick. Put these strips into your Kransekake pans. You don't need to oil pans.

Then bake at 200C for about 15-20 minutes till golden. You'll know your cookies are ready if they easily pop out of the pan. If they stick to the bottom or break when you try to remove them from the pan put them back in the oven for a few more minutes. Cool the baked rings on the rack.

Now let's have fun: assemble our cake and decorate it. Mix all the ingredients for the icing till it looks like a mildly thick paste. If it's too runny add more icing sugar. If it's too thick add a bit more lemon juice. Put the icing into a zip-lock bag and cut a very small hole (about 1-1.5mm). Arrange all your rings in order from the biggest to the smallest. Take your largest ring and put it on your serving plate. Apply icing in U-pattern along the ring. Put the second ring on top, sticking it to the previous ring. Like this:

Continue to the very top. You can decorate your Kransekake with M&Ms, sugar snowflakes or sugar flowers - apply them while icing is still wet. Then let the icing dry - and enjoy!

Happy baking!!