November | 2022 | Bewitching Kitchen

Or, if you prefer, Creamy Hazelnut… paired with a sugar cookie, also flavored with hazelnut and a touch of orange. I adapted this recipe from Gabriella’s blog Siula Golosa (click here for her original version). I’ve been meaning to make these elegant cookies ever since I read her post, but for some reason it only happened now. Better late than never, I say.

HAZELNUT CREAM OVER SUGAR COOKIE
(adapted from Siula Golosa)

for the cookie base:
1 cup (226g) butter
1 cup (200g) sugar
zest of one orange
2 eggs
1 tsp hazelnut bakery emulsion
1/4 tsp orange extract
420g flour
60g cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

for the hazelnut cream:
54g white chocolate
27g dark chocolate
19g Nutella or Nocciolata paste (I used this one)
11g cocoa butter

melted chocolate
gold luster powder
sprinkle to decorate

Make the cookie base: Mix flour, cornstarch, salt and baking powder. Reserve. Rub orange zest on the sugar with your fingers until fragrant. Cream butter with sugar. Whisk eggs with hazelnut and orange extracts, add to the butter/sugar with mixer on low speed, a little bit at a time. Once incorporated, add the dry components and mix on low-speed until a dough forms. Divide in two and refrigerate for 10 minutes before rolling out and cutting small circles. Freeze for 10 minutes, then bake at 350F until edges start to get some color, about 12 minutes. Recipe makes a lot more than you will need.

Make the hazelnut topping: Add all ingredients to a microwave save bowl, and heat at 50% power, in 30 second increments, removing from the microwave and whisking gently. Once melted, pour over a countertop or over acetate sheet and bring the temperature down to 78F by moving it around with a spatula. It is a small volume, so it will get there quickly. Pour into an icing bag, and fill the mold to the top. Allow it to set at room temperature for 1 hour, transfer to the fridge for 20 minutes, and un-mold.

Use a little melted chocolate to glue the hazelnut cream to the top of the cookie. If desired, you can paint the cookie with luster gold and vodka. Decorate the center with a golden bead.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: For the topping you will need this mold from Silikomart. I was very worried about it, because there is so much detail on the surface. But, as always, Silikomart products are excellent and the flexibility of this one was perfect to release the hazelnut component. The mold has 11 cavities, the recipe made exactly 10. Not a single one had any issues, they were all perfect.

Next time I will use the base from Gabriella’s blog, because I think it will be pretty nice, and will also roll it a bit thinner. This was in fact an impulse bake, I had a little bit of cookie dough leftover, and thought that the taste of hazelnut would go well with the creamy top. All things considered, this is a very easy concoction to put together, but it looks like you slaved over it for hours. Perfect to impress your favorite guests!

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Friends, this has been a bit of an ordeal to get to work. The basic idea is to use lace and rub charcoal-activated powder on top of it to create a design. A few posts and reels on Instagram guided me, but it quickly became obvious that every single detail matters and can make or break the outcome. The variables are many: what kind of fabric, how open the design is, and most important, how to make the lace glue to the bread but not too much. I have not hit Nirvana yet, but with this third loaf, I feel good enough to share it with you. Stay tuned for future experiments in which I hope to get all the details optimized.

You can use any sourdough recipe you are fond of. For this particular loaf I used my basic formula described in this post, adding 1 tsp Garam Masala to the dough.

From what I saw in Instagram, the favorite method is to add the lace to the bottom of the banneton, leave it there overnight in the fridge for final fermentation, then rub charcoal, pull the lace and score the top, in a way that the design won’t be too compromised. When I did that, I had two different outcomes, none of them very nice. In the first, I rubbed too much flour over the surface of the dough, and that prevented the charcoal from staying well enough. The second time, I skipped the rubbing of white flour before inverting the dough on the lace, and that was a catastrophic move: the lace glued to the bread, and when I pulled it, it ripped the surface, ruined the design, it was a complete and utter mess.

This time I allowed the bread to sit in the fridge overnight in the banneton, inverted it over parchment paper, placed the lace on top and pressed it as best as I could. Next I added charcoal and rubbed it in. My mistake was to mist the surface with water, a bit too much water went on top, and made the charcoal sip underneath the lace. So the top did not reveal the design, and got way too dark. I think it is easy to fix next time, so I am sharing with you this version and maybe you can play with it and hit the jackpot on you first attempt! Go ahead, make me proud!

The bead had great oven spring, so if I had managed to get the design imprinted all over, it would have been pretty awesome… But, this is much better than my previous two attempts. My advice to you is, try this method if you like it, but don’t expect it to work on your first time, you might have to tweak things depending on the fabric you have, and the design itself. But no matter what, the bread underneath will always taste great, no major harm done if you don’t get it right. This is really a super fun technique and with a ton of possibilities…. Stay tuned for more soon!