X’mas cakes with kids

I’m sharing two recipes for almond X’s cake and cookies (Boules de Linz), traditional sweets for Holidays Season! And kids could do it by themselves …with our “little” help or  even without! The first recipe – Boules de Linz, the traditional biscuits from Alsace-Lorraine region in France.

Boules de Linz  (Almond cookies with raspberry jam)

• All purpose flour   260 gr.
• Almond powder   260 gr.
• Butter  260 gr.
• Icing sugar  130 gr.
• Egg  2 pcs.
• Baking powder   10 gr.
• Cacao powder   20 gr.
• Cinnamon powder  10 gr.
• Five spices  powder  5 gr.

Mix all dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cacao powder, cinnamon and five spices powder, Whisk the butter with icing sugar then add the eggs, one by one, until well-combined. Add the dry ingredients mixture in three additions, mix it well after each addition.

After two hours in the fridge, the dough is hard so it’s easy to cut it into small pieces around 20 gr. per piece. Make well-rounded ball with small hole in the center and fill it with raspberry jam. Leave it in the fridge for another one hour before bake it at 180º C for 12-15 minutes.

Boules de Linz is traditional biscuits for Christmas in Alsace-Lorraine (France) where there are my two favorite towns and both are very famous – Strasbourg and Colmar. Boules de Linz or Linzele flavorful with cinnamon, five species, with a bit sour taste of the raspberry jam, and instead of super fine almond powder from the store, I prefer to grind almond at home as it’s better when the almond is not ground finely.

Almond Christmas cake  

Preparation for the almond sponge cake

• Eggs  6 pcs.
• Almond powder  100 gr.
• Sugar   100 gr.
• Pastry flour  40 gr.

Mix almond powder together with flour, beat very well the egg with sugar, then gently mix dry ingredients with the well-beaten egg. The mixture is very fluffy, evenly overlay on the baking sheet (30 cm x 40 cm) and bake it at 180ºC-200ºC within 12-15 minutes. The egg yolks and egg whites can be beaten separately but I prefer to beat the whole eggs together and the sponge cake doesn’t crack when rolled.

Preparation for chocolate buttercream 

• Butter  200 gr.
• Confectioner’s sugar  100 gr.
• Dark chocolate  50-100 gr.

Cream butter together with sugar when it well-combine then add melted chocolate and mix it well. Let it cool and spread it evenly on the almond sponge cake

Preparation for ganache

• Whipping cream  250 ml.
• Dark chocolate 150 gr.
• Milk chocolate  100 gr.

Heat the cream, not to boil, add the chocolate, mix it well until we get the shining ganache. Keep ganache in the fridge for 20-30 minutes before decorate the rolled almond cake already filled with chocolate buttercream.

and here we go…our X’mas cake after a half day of working hard!

                        MEERY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!