Dattelkonfekt – Gluten-Free

May 12, 2015

I LOVED these cookies. They are my kind of cookie through and through. The crispy merengue offset by the chewy date is a texture a really groove on.

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Ingredients

Volume Grams Ounces

Instructions

SPECIAL COOKIE EQUIPMENT

2 baking trays , a competent food processor , a stand mixer,or back oblaten edible nougat, rice and wafer paper.

PAPER BACKING

Being that I had nougat paper left over from my Nougat aux Fruits, I used it in place of the back oblaten.

My 2″ circles drawn onto left over nougat paper.

It took forever to cut the 2″ circles,

Even then I had to recut the ink marks off the circles since I hadn’t the forethought when I cut them the first time that the paper would be consumed.

CHOPPING THE ALMONDS AND DATES

As I’m whizzing the almonds and dates in my less than competent food processor, I wanted to make sure that the bits were small enough to pass through a piping tip.

I think they should be small enough to go through the tip.

There is nothing more annoying than getting pieces of nut or date stuck when you’re trying to get your work done. What would be easier, the spoon or piping bag? Which would get the best effect? In the end I chose to pipe the meringue.

THE DATE NUT MERINGUE

This went together very easily. The meringue looked like marshmallow after 5 minutes,

Deflated egg whites after 5 minutes at medium high speed.

and the batter tasted beautiful with the almonds and dates. I felt a winner cookie on the horizon.

PIPING THE DATE NUT MERINGUE

Went smoothly,

but I noticed that the batter melted into itself. So no matter how high I piled it up, gravity levelled everything. Even when I went back to add more batter to those cookies that seemed short, the batter spread a little more

BAKE THE COOKIES

This wasn’t as straight forward as I had suspected. I chose the Bake mode on my oven where only the bottom element was hot and no fan. I set two trays in the oven and after 10 minutes, the tray on the top rack had over browned and was flat, while the lower tray hadn’t baked through. This was clearly a mistake. So I changed the setting to Convection and moved the bottom tray to the top and set the third tray on the lower rack. This changed the game up. The second tray puffed the best, and these are the cookies that I featured in my beauty shot, but overall the cookies didn’t “puff” into mounds like in the picture. And, all three trays of cookies spread beyond the nougat paper.

CONCLUSION: If I had to do these over, I’m not sure that the rice paper added anything to the cookie. I could be wrong, but I would try a batch without the paper and spoon the meringues into mounds and bake one tray at a time. In spite of everything, these cookies are wonderful and satisfied me in every way. A definite do over!