Kongresser

Just before Christmas, my Mum dug out a food magazine - "Allt om mat" - which translates to all about food and I believe is comparable to "Good Food" in the UK. It was the November edition of 1992 and had a lot of Christmas related articles in it.



But that's not what caught my attention. Well, the date did, obviously, but mostly the front page picture of a mazarin and some other similar pieces of pastry.

The article was about the Swedish tradition of kaffebröd (literally: coffee breads) and in particular the mazarin and its cousins.

Now, as you know, Lundulph is very partial to things containing marzipan and the mazarin is actually filled with it. The shell is made of short crust pastry and it's glazed with icing on top. So I thought, he'd like the mazarin cousins as well and flicking through the pages, I decided on what seemed the easiest of them all - kongresser.



This does indeed mean congresses and there was no information as to why they are called this.

It also felt very cheaty to do them - using ready made puff pastry. So here goes, without further ado. This recipe makes 20 - 25. It also requires aluminium foil cup cakes, as they are sturdier and will force the pastry to keep its shape.

Ingredients
340 g puff pastry, thoroughly thawed, but cold
400 g hazelnuts or walnuts
300 g granary sugar
5 medium eggs

Method

1. Put together two sheets of puff pastry and squeeze together. Then on a floured surface roll out as thinly as possible, about a couple of mm thick.


2. Let the dough rest a couple of minutes, so it doesn't shrink. Then with a round cutter, cut out as many circles as possible.


3. Any off-cuts can be piled together and rolled out again.


4. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C (fan assisted to 175).


5. Fit the circles in the aluminium cup cakes. Press in if necessary.
   


6. Whizz the nuts in a blender for a minute or so, there should be a good mix of coarse and fine pieces.


7. In a bowl, mix the nuts with the sugar and stir in the eggs.
   


8. Distribute the mixture in the cup cakes, filling up as much as possible.


9. Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes, until they stop swelling.

The rolled puff pastry doesn't swell up like unrolled one does, but still goes a bit crispy. The filling has a good crunch to it thanks to the nuts, but at the same time it is a bit sticky in the middle.

The original recipe says hazelnuts, but we seem to have an excess of walnuts at the moment, so I used them instead. Plus my Sister Bip can't eat hazelnuts either, so this way she could have some too.

I made this batch last Friday. Today is Tuesday and they still taste rather nice. I can't wait to try out the other mazarin cousins.

(If you search on google images for mazarin, you'll get a lot of portraits of a man in a red dress, this would be Cardinal Mazarin, who apparently was fond of the mazarin cakes and they are named after him).