Joulutorttu: Finnish plum paste

Today, Eva, author of Bake-Street , takes us to the Nordic countries with some pastries that you will fall in love with: made with a soft dough and filled with plum jam, they are ideal to accompany afternoon tea or coffee... Or to start the day with a smile!

If there is something that fascinates me, it is spices, and among them, one of my favorites is cardamom. I think that is one of the reasons why I feel devotion for Nordic pastries.

The pastries I bring you today are without a doubt a real delight for the palate, very aromatic, soft and with a delicate texture that is also crunchy. Joulutorttu can be made with Danish pastry, a dough very similar to puff pastry flavoured with cardamom or with a sablée-type dough made with crème fraîche, which gives it a lot of softness.

It is common to eat them at Christmas, in fact the translation of their name is “Christmas cake” also called Tähtitorttu “star cake”, but I have always considered that recipes should not be pigeonholed since if they are so extraordinarily delicious the good thing is to be able to enjoy them whenever we want.

Traditionally, they are filled with a spiced plum paste and then sprinkled with icing sugar after baking. In my case, I have kept the filling because I can assure you that it is wonderful, but for those of you who are not very fond of this fruit, you can vary the filling with a jam you like, such as orange, blackberry, apricot, apple... For the decoration, I have chosen to use pearl sugar, but you can always omit it and finish them with icing sugar if you prefer.

To bake them I used the perforated tray and the de Buyer silpat that allow for an even distribution of heat over the entire surface resulting in a crispy texture and preventing the base from browning excessively.

The recipe is inspired by one by Signe Johansen, who suggested this variation on the dough and it is undoubtedly a success.

INGREDIENTS (for 28-30 pastas)

For the dough:

• 110 g cold unsalted butter
• 110 g granulated white sugar
• 250 g of wheat flour for baking
• 11 g baking powder or booster
• 75 g of crème fraîche
• 1 large egg yolk
• a pinch of salt (between 1 and 2 g)
• 8 cardamom pods

For the filling:

• 100 g of prunes
• juice and zest of one orange
• juice of ½ lemon
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
• 1 clove
• 4 cardamom pods
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon dark muscovado sugar

To decorate:

• 1 beaten egg
• pearl sugar
• demerara sugar

ELABORATION:

We prepare the dough for the cookies.

1. In a mortar, crush the cardamom pods, remove the shell and crush the seeds to release the aromas. Set aside.
2. In a bowl, add the flour with a pinch of salt. Grate the cold butter to make it easier to mix it with the flour. Start mixing both ingredients with your fingertips until you get a sandy mixture. Add the sugar and baking powder. Mix again to homogenize the ingredients.
3. We add the crème fraîche together with the egg yolk and mix until we obtain a compact dough.
4. We turn the dough out onto a work surface and begin to make the fraisage. This technique will help us to integrate the ingredients well without overworking the dough, thus avoiding the development of gluten and the dough becoming deformed during baking.
5. To do this, place the dough on a work surface and slide the heel or heel of your hand over it, sliding it forward. Pick up the dough and repeat this step until the dough is amalgamated. You will be able to unite the ingredients without overworking it, achieving a crunchy texture after baking.
6. We form a disk with the dough, cover it with film and place it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. We can leave it overnight if we wish.

We prepare the filling.

1. In a saucepan, add the chopped plums together with the orange juice and zest, lemon juice, sugar and spices. Place over medium-low heat and stir with a spoon to help lightly break up the plums until you obtain a smooth puree.
2. We want to obtain a “spreadable” texture. If we notice that it has dried too much in the heat and the texture is very dense, we can add a little more orange juice or water, as we choose, to soften it. Remove from heat and let cool completely.

We form the cookies.

1. We take the dough out of the fridge and to help it stretch without it sticking to the work surface or the rolling pin , we will do it between two sheets of baking paper. We will give it a thickness of about 3mm, we can use an adjustable rolling pin .

2. Once the dough is stretched, put it back in the fridge for about 30 minutes. It is very important to work with the dough very cold, otherwise it will be difficult to handle and it will easily lose its shape.

Buyer perforated tray and silpat

3. Cut out squares with a 5.5 cm cutter. Remember that the colder the dough is, the cleaner and more perfect the cuts will be and the easier it will be to remove the dough from the mould.

4. Place the cookies you are cutting on a perforated tray lined with baking paper . Once all the cookies are cut, refrigerate them again for 30 minutes.

5. After this time, we take them out of the cold and proceed to fill them and give them the final shape.

6. Using a sharp knife, make four cuts from the corners towards the centre, but without cutting all the way to the centre so that the biscuit can stay together. Place a small amount of the plum puree in the middle and shape it into a pinwheel.

7. We will bring the peaks that we have created by making the cuts alternating them to the center, so that we will create a windmill. To seal the dough and help it maintain its shape, we will gently press the union of all of them. We will repeat the process with the rest of the cookies.

8. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes before baking.

9. Preheat the oven to 180º C with heat above and below.

10. Prepare the perforated tray and place the de Buyer silpat on it.

11. Remove the biscuits from the fridge, brush with beaten egg, decorate the centre with pearl sugar and sprinkle the surface with demerara sugar. This type of sugar remains intact after baking without melting on the biscuits.

Baguette Board MasterClass

12. Transfer the cookies to the tray with the Silpat and place in the oven at medium height for 10-12 minutes or until they turn a light golden colour. Remove and place the Silpat, with the cookies, on acooling rack . Allow to cool completely before handling them, as they are very delicate and could break.

13. Now all we have to do is prepare a nice tea or coffee and enjoy these exquisite cookies.