Raspberry Rugelach with Hazelnuts

These croissant-shaped little sweet pastries are my new favourite! They are easy and quick to make, they look pretty, and taste fantastic. I first baked rugelach with a chocolate filling, but didn’t like them at all. The dough was great, though, so I made a new attempt with raspberry jam and hazelnuts as filling - and this time I hit the jackpot...!

For 24 rugelach you need:

• 120g butter


• 170g whole-grain spelt flour


• a generous pinch of salt (less generous if using salted butter)


• 120g quark or sour cream

For the filling:

• 200g raspberry jam


• two handfuls of coarsely chopped hazelnuts

To decorate:

• 1 Tbsp vanilla-scented confectioners’ sugar

Cut the butter in small cubes and place in a baking bowl. Add flour and salt, and work with your fingertips until the texture is like fine crumbles. Then add quark or sour cream and work with your hands until you can form the dough into a ball. Then place the dough in your fridge for at least 30 minutes, but you can make the dough even several hours before.

When you take the dough out of the fridge, set your oven to 190 C. With a rolling pin, roll the dough out into two 25 cm diameter circles. Cover both circles evenly with raspberry jam and chopped hazelnuts. Cut each circle into 12 triangular pieces, as if you were cutting a pizza. Roll each triangle and form a small crescent. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Let your rugelach cool some 10 minutes. Then sprinkle them with confectioners’ sugar and enjoy!

P.S. To make vanilla-flavoured confectioners’ sugar, take a glass jar with a lid. Cut one vanilla pod lengthwise into two pieces and place in the jar. Now fill the jar with confectioners’ sugar, cover, and wait one week or so – and voilà, you’ve got your own vanilla powder sugar!

Linzer Schnitten

I first tasted Linzer Torte in Vienna some years ago, and immediately became a fan. The combination of hazelnut, spices, and jam together with the crumbly sticky texture is just heavenly. This recipe brings you the same flavours and texture but in a miniature size!

These cookies are much easier to bake than one might first think. You just make the dough, roll it out, cover first with jam, then a criss-cross-pattern of dough stripes, bake, and cut into small cookies. That’s it! Be careful with the clover, though; better use a bit less than too much, or the other flavours don’t stand any chance.

For about 50 cookies you need:

• 300g flour (I used spelt 1050)


• 100g ground hazelnuts


• 80g sugar


• 1 tsp baking powder


• a pinch of salt


• 1 tsp cinnamon (Ceylon, if possible)


• 1 pinch of ground cloves (or more, if you like a stronger taste)


• 200g butter or vegan margarine


• about 50ml (vegan) milk


• 100g red currant jam


• 80 g raspberry jam


• one egg yolk and 1 Tbsp milk for the wash (optional)

Combine flour, hazelnut, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves in a baking bowl. Add butter (cut in small cubes) and work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly. Add enough milk so that you can form the dough into a ball.

Take about ⅔ of the dough and roll it out into a rectangular form (mine was 25cm*35cm). Place the rectangle on an oven pan covered with a parchment paper. (If you want, you can roll the dough out on the parchment paper already - that way, you don’t need to worry about whether it will break when you move it!) Combine both jams in a bowl and spread them evenly on the dough.

Now, roll the rest of the dough about 3 mm thin. Cut out long stripes about 0,5cm wide with a knife or with a pastry wheel. Arrange the stripes to form a criss-cross pattern as in the picture. If you want, you can brush the stripes with egg yolk and milk - this gives a very beautiful colour to the cookies!

Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) about 25 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Let cool, then cut into long rectangular cookies, about 2cm wide and 7cm long.

P.S. I first tasted Linzer Torte in Café Goldegg, a coffee shop in Vienna that just might have the best coffee in the world. The cakes were awesome as well. Service was impeccable. And yet: I’ll never go to Café Goldegg again. Why? Because happy children are not welcome there. Every time we went there with a crying child, it was just fine. But when we once managed to have five happy children with us, it was a problem. The owner came personally to tell us that loud laughter was not allowed in a coffee shop. I mean, REALLY. How screwed-up is that?

Kaffeemakronen - Coffee Macaroons

A friend of mine was asking for me to bake hazelnut macaroons, which are a must in any self-respecting Plätzchen assortment, but I was craving for something with coffee. That’s how I came up with this recipe that combines both wishes -  and it worked! There’s not enough coffee to my taste, but then again, will there ever be? ;)

German macaroons are very easy to do compared with their French counterparts. Just beat the egg whites, add the rest, and bake. Most recipes tell you to wait a couple of hours before baking them, but today I didn’t have the time for that, and they turned out good even so.

For about 28 macaroons you need:

• 2 egg whites


• a pinch of salt


• 85g sugar


• 145g ground hazelnuts


• 30g all-purpose flour


• 3 tsp instant coffee - make it as strong as you can!


• 2 Tbsp molasses


• 28 chocolate covered coffee beans

First make the coffee: dilute as much instant coffee as you can in about 2 Tbsp hot water. Note that you'll only need part of this - the rest you can drink, provided you add  a lot of sugar ;) (This is how I did it, maybe there would be better methods.)

Beat the egg whites together with the salt until they form soft peaks. Then add gradually the sugar and continue beating until shiny and firm again. Then add hazelnuts, flour, and 3 tsp of that strong instant coffee you made. Stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined.

Now, drop batter by teaspoonfuls on an oven tray covered with a parchment paper. It’s best to use two spoons - in one, you have the batter, and with the other one, you help the batter to land on the oven tray.

Bake your macaroons in a preheated oven (160 C) for about 20 minutes, or until they are not sticky anymore form the outside but still soft from the inside. Glue one coffee bean on top of each macaroon, using molasses as glue.