Indeed, when we try kurabye shortbread cookies, childhood memories come to mind when this dessert could be eaten with tea and milk.
The successful combination of crisp crusty dough with a thin berry layer elevates this dish to extraordinary heights. And most importantly, the kurabye recipe is so simple that even novice cooks can master it.
A bit of history
It is unlikely that many knew the real name of this cookie, which has the shape of a flower. But the story tells that the roots of the recipe go far, far to the East, where it originated in the house of a rich Persian sultan.
When all the traditional sweets, such as Turkish delight, pastille and all that, disappeared from the house, the creative thinking of one of the servants cleverly corrected the situation. He mixed all the available ingredients in one container and baked in the oven. To decorate, he sprinkled sugar on the dessert and added a spoonful of sweet jam.
Cookies are so loved by the people that now they can be found not only at the rich sultan’s house, but in all supermarkets. Well, we will go further and cook kurabye at home!
List of ingredients
For cooking, take:
- Butter - 80 g.
- Egg yolk - 1 pc.
- Wheat flour - 150 g.
- Baking powder - 1/4 tsp.
- Powdered Sugar - 60 g.
- Starch - 1 tbsp. l
- Jam / fresh berries + sugar.
Making berry jam
Of course, you can skip this point and buy ready-made jam in the supermarket, but we still will not save on quality, as we are preparing kurabye cookies in accordance with GOST.
Moreover, it is very simple to make berry jam:
- Take a fresh or frozen berry and place it in a deep container. It is best if you choose sweeter fruits so that you do not have to increase the amount of sugar to suppress acidity.
- Mash the berries with a fork or a blender, depending on the desired result. If you want a more textured jam, then a fork will be enough, so when biting off a piece of biscuit you will find both shortcrust pastry and juicy pieces of berry.
- Sprinkle the contents with sugar and remember again. As soon as a sufficient amount of juice is released, place the container on the stove and warm the berries thoroughly until thickened.
- Set the jam aside so that it cools down well, and in the meantime let's move on to the liver itself!
Create Shortcrust Dough
It is believed that it is very difficult to make a cookie dough. And this is really strange, because it is an absolute lie.
The dough for curabier is prepared in just a few steps, in addition, we will describe them in detail to you, so do not worry about this stage.
- In a separate deep container, combine butter, icing sugar and yolk, carefully rubbing the ingredients together with a fork. To facilitate this process, we can advise you to remove the oil in advance, 30-40 minutes before the cooking process, so that it softens.
- In another bowl, mix all dry ingredients, flour, baking powder and starch so that they are evenly distributed throughout the mass.
- Now you need to pour the dry components into the first container and gently, first with a spoon, and then with your hands, knead a very elastic and obedient dough. In addition, you can facilitate your work if you have a special combine for kneading dough. The finished "bun" should be wrapped with cling film or a damp towel so that it does not dry out and set aside.
Kurabye Recipe: Cookie Formation
When the dough and berry jam are ready, you can safely proceed to the penultimate step, to create a flower shape for the dessert.
- We put the oven to heat up to 180 degrees, and in the meantime we begin to form cookies.
- We can assume that the kurabye recipe is just famous for its amazing shape of cookies, which is not so easy to create. That is why we will introduce you to two ways how you can make this shape with cookies. For the first option, take the dough, in this case it can be thick and dense, and divide it into equal pieces.
- Then, we form the obtained pieces of a relatively small size into balls, which we flatten into pancakes with a diameter of 3-4 centimeters. Using a knife, we create incisions to create the greatest resemblance to a flower. These billets can already be baked, not forgetting to add a drop of jam for each cookie.
- For the second method, we will need a more plastic and liquid dough, since we will create the form of dessert with the help of a pastry bag with a special nozzle.
- After the bag is filled with dough, we place small cookies on baking paper. To do this, you just need to bring the nozzle as close to the paper as possible and press the bag, the dough will start to come out, remaining on the paper. And as soon as the product reaches the required size, you can stop squeezing and remove the bag.
- Of course, you will have to make some effort to make the dough come out, lie down gently and at the same time tear yourself away from the finished cookies, but this method is considered traditional in making curabie.
Last steps
Now we can assume that the cookie is almost ready, not counting the remaining two or three necessary actions.
- We transfer the prepared cookies to a baking sheet with baking paper and fill them with berry jam on top. This can be done the old fashioned way, using an ordinary spoon, or stock up on a pastry bag without any nozzle and simply cut off the end of the bag and pour jam on each piece in batches. The most important thing is not to overdo it so that excess jam does not pour on the dough.
- Put the baked goods in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. But do not forget that the power of all ovens is different, so you have to adjust the cooking time yourself. The main sign of readiness will be a slightly golden dough, more tanned at the bottom and along the edges of the cookies. The jam should remain exactly the same as it was at the very beginning, it can only slightly thicken and turn into something like berry nougat.
- Ready cookies can be served immediately to the table or first sprinkled with powdered sugar for greater beauty.
Conclusion
So, today we learned how to cook kurabye at home, which was much easier than we could even imagine. In addition, we were not too lazy and independently created berry jam for dessert, which is good both with it and as a separate dish.
The cookie itself turned out to be very light and airy, it literally melts in your mouth, and a small addition of berry jam immediately changes the whole taste. Of course, even kurabye cookies, whose calorie content is about 500 kcal per 100 grams, are not suitable for a daily treat.
But this does not mean that you need to completely abandon such pleasures, on the contrary, you need to pamper yourself, at least once a week, arranging yourself a small holiday. A curabier recipe is perfect for this!