Desserts can be just sweet and satisfying, and can be healthy and vitamin. One of the delicious and at the same time containing a lot of trace elements necessary for the body is a shortbread cake with cottage cheese and jam.
It is often prepared in the winter, when a lack of vitamins is especially acute. For its preparation, you can use both homemade preserves and purchased jams. Curd is better to take market. It should not be too wet, try for sweetness to know how much sugar to add to the cake.
In the article we will describe the basic recipe for making shortcrust pastry, give a recipe for a pie with cottage cheese and jam, describe in detail how to cook the filling and how it can be nicely decorated.
Recipe number 1: basic
Shortbread dough got its name from the tiny size of its structure. With a bite, a layer of baked dough simply crumbles in the mouth. To do it, a lot of time will not be needed. Cook the following foods:
- 250 grams of white sifted flour;
- 150 or 200 grams of softened butter;
- 100 grams of powdered granulated sugar;
- 1 egg or only 2 yolks;
- salt on the tip of a knife.
To make a pie with cottage cheese and jam, make the dough in advance, since it should stand in the cold for at least an hour. In a bowl, knead the butter at room temperature with sugar and salt until a homogeneous pasty mass is obtained. If you have a mixer, you can use it. But you can also whip manually with a whisk.
There is one little secret here. Do not beat the butter for a long time, since the dough after baking can turn out to be hard and the pie with cottage cheese and jam will be spoiled.
Then add the eggs and mix again. The sifted flour is poured onto a clean, dry table and in the middle a recess is made in which the oil mixture is laid out. Gradually adding flour to the hands, knead the dough. Do not be afraid if it sticks to your hands. You can use a dough mixer, if it is in a food processor, for example.
A ball is formed from the finished dough, wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the cold for one hour. This is a standard shortcrust pastry recipe that can be used to bake both cookies and pie with cottage cheese and jam.
Recipe number 2
There is another recipe for making shortcrust pastry, which is suitable for baking a pie with our ingredients - cottage cheese and jam. It is necessary to take such components:
- 300 grams of sifted wheat flour;
- 200 grams of cream margarine;
- 100 grams of powdered sugar;
- 1 yolk;
- half a bag of baking powder;
- zest of half fresh lemon.
Soft margarine at room temperature (you need to put it out of the refrigerator in advance) is beaten with icing sugar, and then lemon zest is added. Baking powder is added to bulk flour and mixed with dry hands.
Then, combining the products, knead the dough. Divide it equally into two parts. One will be intended for the lower part of the pie with cottage cheese and jam, and the other for the design of the upper "lattice" of thin strips. The dough is placed in the refrigerator for aging, and in the meantime, they are preparing the filling of cottage cheese.
Making curd filling
For the pie, prepare half a kilogram of cottage cheese, 120 grams of powdered sugar powder (you can buy it in the store), 1 tablespoon semolina, squeeze the juice of half a lemon in a saucer.
So that there are no lumps left in the cottage cheese, you can wipe it through a sieve, beat with a blender or pass through a meat grinder. Depending on the sweetness of the cottage cheese and your preferences, you can add more or less powdered sugar. After pouring it into a bowl of cottage cheese, add lemon juice and mix. Sprinkle the decoys at the end. If the cottage cheese is too soft and liquid, then cereals can be added a little more.
Jam selection
This shortcake is filled with cottage cheese, and a layer of jam is applied on top. But it will be prettier to make a “lattice” from the dough and fill the cell compartments with a small amount of thick jam. It will be interesting to look at the finished cake if you use jam of different colors, laying out the varieties in a checkerboard pattern, for example, combine dark cherry with apricot or blueberry with sea buckthorn.
Bake cake
The dough is taken out of the refrigerator. The baking dish is sprinkled with flour and a ball of dough is placed in the center. Then, with palms, level it over the entire surface of the form, capturing the walls. The dough is perfectly sculpted. Some use a rolling pin to roll a flat surface. If you bake a pie with cottage cheese and jam (photo is presented in the article) on a baking sheet, you can use this method, only sprinkle a rolling pin with flour.
Then the form is placed for 10 minutes in the oven, preheated to 180 degrees. Then the workpiece is removed, and work continues already with the spreading of the filling.
Final phase
On a slightly browned cake, spread the curd filling with an even layer. A sheet of 3 mm thick is rolled out from the rest of the dough and cut into thin strips. On cottage cheese, they are laid out on top with a grill. First, all vertical stripes with gaps of several centimeters, then horizontal. It is better if there are not squares, but rhombuses between them.
Then, jam is laid out in a checkerboard pattern in each cell. The cake looks beautiful if there are several types of jam in it. Some housewives spread the jam after baking, but you can put a teaspoon in the holes immediately.
According to this recipe, a shortcake with cottage cheese and jam should be baked for 15 minutes. Before putting in the oven, cover the upper strips with a whipped yolk using a silicone cooking brush. Enjoy your meal!