Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Hungarian Shortbread-TWD Baking with Julia


Hungarian Shortbread-that sounded interesting,especially to me with my mixed European Heritage.  Honestly I can't say which countries my relatives came from. My one grandfather had altered his name and told us he was from a small village in Lithuania and yet what little of his documents we could locate, showed St. Petersburg , Russia !  The other grandfather fled the Yugoslavian army,changed his name and we think stowed away on one of the ships out of Belgium. It's all a mystery as anyone who might have known something about either of my grandfathers is long gone. So I chuckled when I saw this recipe.  I thought immediately-shortbread,ahh those lovely buttery cookies. But what a surprise as I read the directions and ingredients, I thought hmm,pastry masquerading itself as shortbread-was it hiding from something like my grandfathers?  I wasn't sure about it,especially the "freeze the dough and grate it " part !  But let me tell you, this dough was so buttery and tasty, I'm thinking of trying shortbread cookie dough ice cream.  I'm not usually a raw dough fan but I had to hurry and put this in the oven before I taste tested all of the dough .


According to About.com "Hungarian shortbread or omlos teasutemeny (oom-loosh TAY-ahsh-soo-teh-men-ee), where omlos means short pastry and teasutemeny means biscuit in the cookie sense, has a thin layer of jam between two layers of buttery dough."  I used my best and sweetest butter, Kerrygold Irish Butter, for this.Whenever I make shortbread I always try to use Kerrygold-it gives a much richer and sweeter taste.But, I made a huge error as I was setting up my mise en place. The recipe calls for 4 cups of all purpose flour- I only had 1 cup left-how could that happen ? So I improvised, I added 2 cups of all purpose bread flour and 1 cup of cake flour-hoping the low gluten content in the cake flour would balance out the high gluten in the bread flour. And it did. I was worried that the shortbread would be too doughy and tough from the bread flour but the baking gods were with me and it turned out perfectly.


This is very rich, and I think it would be just as rich regardless of the type of butter used.  It's delicious,buttery and sweet.  I didn't make my own jam but instead used my favorite Bonne Maman Cherry Preserves. The tart cherries set off the buttery dough to perfection. You can see what my fellow bakers did with this recipe by clicking here.




And thanks to Lynette from 1Small Kitchen and Cher from The not so exciting adventures of a dabbler for hosting this week. Now go buy the book and start baking with us .








16 comments:

Robin said...

Great photos! I used the same brand of jam, only strawberry ;) This one was yummy!

Robin said...

Great photos! I used the same brand of jam, only strawberry ;) This one was yummy!

Cher Rockwell said...

Wow, quick thinking on the flour. Good save! Your cookies look like they came out great.

Family lineage is always interesting, isn't it? There are a few interesting ones on my dad's side that no one can track down. I feel thwarted...

T-mom said...

I agree with how good the dough tasted. I had to fill the bowl with water so as to stop licking the bowl!!

Marlise said...

Your photos are so beautiful. Your cake looks so delicious. And I love the jam selection.

Amanda said...

Your photos are beautiful, they made my mouth water. This looks perfect, you can't tell at all that you had to improvise!

Kathy said...

Oooo these look incredibly delicious! Great photos, especially the close up with the fork…yum!

yummychunklet said...

I love how your photos accentuate the oozing jam. Great post!

Saira said...

Your Shortbread looks so yummy :-) It was a very easy and fun recipe ... :-)

Unknown said...

Your pictures look amazing!!!!

Peggy said...

I too wanted to just eat the raw dough and have a new appreciation for the idea of cookie dough ice cream which I never understood. Very nice photos.

Cathleen | My Culinary Mission said...

Great photos! I loved the dough too but that is about it. Just was not my cup of tea. Yours look realy tasty.

Roadtrek Girl said...

@Robin,great minds think alike-that is my favorite brand.

@Cher-that brief stint in pastry school always comes in handy-Chef would be so proud that I remembered the gluten qualities !
@ T-mom, I know what you mean-I kept hearing calorie count kaching kaching,like the sounds in a casino as I was eating that raw dough.

Roadtrek Girl said...

Marlise,Amanda,Kathy,yummychunklet,Saira,Mireia,Peggy and Cathleen thank you all for your lovely comments about the photos-I finally invested in Adobe Lightroom 4 ,still learning my way through it but I love the options you have for photos with it.

Teresa said...

Tart cherry jam sounds like a great filling for these squares. We loved them with the rhubarb jam.

Gracie said...

Lovely! I need to make time to make these.