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Bakeland birch bark cookies

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  • Makes22 cookies
Bakeland birch bark cookies

Birch trees are easily recognizable from their characteristic white bark. As the trees grow older, the glossy bark cracks and forms dark furrows. Surprise your guests with these crisp birch bark cookies made with the classic combination of vanilla and chocolate.

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup butter, at room temperature

  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar

  • 1 egg

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

  • 1/2 tsp baking powder

  • 1/4 tsp vanilla bean, seeds or sugar

Decorations

  • 3 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate

  • 1 1/2 cups icing sugar

  • 2 Oreos

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400 °F (200 °C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

  • Using a handheld mixer, whip the butter and the sugar together in a bowl until fluffy. Add the egg and mix well.

  • In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and vanilla seeds or sugar.

  • With the mixer on low speed, beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture until combined.

  • For each cookie, take around 1½ Tbsp of dough and form it into a sausage shape, the thickness of your finger. Flatten slightly onto the prepared baking sheet. The cookies should be around ⅛ inch thick (3 to 5 mm). Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes on the middle rack of the oven. Transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

  • For decorating: Remove the white filling from the Oreo cookies, put the cookies in a plastic bag, and crush them with a rolling pin.

  • Temper the chocolate (see below).

  • Spread the chocolate on the vanilla cookies.

  • In a bowl, combine the icing sugar with the egg white. When the chocolate on the cookies has hardened, spread a layer of the icing on top of each cookie, reserving a little icing.

  • With a toothpick, randomly scrape away some of the icing from each cookie.

  • Apply some more icing where you want the Oreo crumbs to stick, maybe around the edge of the scrapes you made in the previous step. Use toothpicks, or put the icing in a piping bag.

  • Immediately sprinkle the crushed Oreo cookies over the icing. Shake gently to remove the crumbs that don’t stick.

  • Make short transverse lines by dragging a sharp knife across the white icing.

  • Now the cookies are ready to be eaten or to be stored in an airtight container.

Tempering Dark Chocolate

Temperature 1: 125ºF (52ºC)

Temperature 2: 82ºF (28ºC)

Temperature 3: 88ºF (31ºC)

You’ll need a saucepan for the water, a stainless steel bowl (or use a double boiler), a candy thermometer, a rubber spatula, a knife—and of course the chocolate you’re going to temper. The stainless steel bowl must have a larger circumference than the saucepan so that it hangs on the edge of the saucepan. The bowl must not touch the hot water.

  1. Finely chop the chocolate.
  2. Put one-third of the chocolate in a small bowl and the remaining two-thirds in the stainless steel bowl.
  3. Put some water in the saucepan, making sure the water doesn’t reach the stainless steel bowl, which will be placed above it later.

Place the saucepan with water on the stove and bring the water almost to the boiling point. Remove the saucepan from the burner and place the stainless steel bowl over the water. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t get water in the chocolate, or it will become lumpy. Remember that steam is water too! Gently stir with a thermometer. You don’t want to stir in a lot of air. When the chocolate reaches temperature 1, remove the bowl from the saucepan.

  1. Add the remaining 1/3 of the chocolate to the bowl and fold it in with a rubber spatula.
  2. When the chocolate has melted, switch to the thermometer again instead of the spatula. Gently stir until the chocolate reaches temperature 2.
  3. Put the bowl back on the saucepan. Now the chocolate is to be warmed back up to temperature 3. This will happen quickly. When it has reached the proper temperature, remove the bowl from the heat.
  4. The chocolate is now ready to be used.

Excerpted from Bakeland: Nordic Treats Inspired by Nature by Marit Hovland, published April 2018 by Greystone Books. Reproduced and condensed with permission from the publisher.

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