Eton Mess

This Sunday come to the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market between 10 am - 2 pm at the corner of Agate and 19th Ave for all your summer produce from Camas Swale Farm, pastured meat and poultry from Fair Valley Farm and Fog Hollow Farm, and wine from Summerfield Vineyards. 

Camas Swale Farm has lovely strawberries, which we used in our family's traditional Fourth of July dessert, Eton mess. I will admit that it is a bit incongruous to celebrate our country's independence from England with a thoroughly British pudding, first served at a cricket match in 1893, but this tradition dates back to a very patriotic Fourth of July we celebrated with ex-pat friends in Oxford. And it certainly looks patriotic.

It's also dead easy to make, consisting of just meringues, whipped cream, and berries. You can preassemble the parts in parfait glasses, but we like to serve the components separately so that everyone can create their ideal dessert with desired ratios and messiness.

Eton mess (deconstructed)

Fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or a mixture
Whipped cream, very lightly sweetened
meringues (recipe below)

Assembly as desired. For soggier meringues, crumble them and mix them into the whipped cream, or alternatively leave them whole on top.

Meringues (adapted from sugarspunrun.com)
4 large egg whites room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 225F (105C) and line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

2. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt in a large, completely clean, completely grease-free bowl.

3. Using an electric mixer or a stand mixer (with either the whisk), stir on low speed until mixture becomes foamy. Increase speed to high.

4. With mixer on high, gradually add sugar, about 1 Tablespoon at a time, stirring after each addition until sugar is dissolved (about 15-20 seconds between each addition).

5. Beat until mixture is thick, shiny, and has increased in volume. Mixture should have stiff peaks and sugar should be completely dissolved (you can test this by rubbing a small bit of the mixture between your fingers, if it feels gritty, the sugar isn't dissolved).

6. Stir in vanilla extract and any other extract you may like to use.  If using food coloring, add the food coloring at this stage, too.

7. Fit a large disposable piping bag with a large tip and transfer meringue to prepared piping bag and pipe onto prepared cookie sheet. The meringue cookies can be pretty close to each other as they won’t spread, and you will want to bake all of the cookies at the same time, so make sure you make enough space.

8. Bake on 225F (105C) for 1 hour. Turn off the oven once the baking time has passed, and do not open the oven. Leave the oven door closed and allow cookies to cool completely in the oven (1-2 hours) before removing. Meringue cookies should be crisp and can be stored in an airtight container. Keep away from heat and moisture as it can soften your meringues.

Hazelnut Biscotti

This Sunday at the Fairmount Farmers Market, you'll find pastured meats and eggs from Fair Valley Farm and Fog Hollow Farm and fresh produce from Camas Swale Farm including:
berries (serve with biscotti, recipe below)
greens
radishes (make some smashed radishes in chili oil)
salad 
snap peas (try some springtime spaghetti carbonara)

The first of the spring strawberries are such a treat, that I prefer to savor them plain rather than hiding them in pillows of sweet toppings. A refined hazelnut biscotti makes the perfect accompaniment to naturally sweet berries. My daughter made biscotti for my husband's birthday and we've been nibbling them with fresh strawberries all week.

Hazelnut Biscotti

adapted from Patricia Wells Tratoria

2 cups (265 g) unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
3 large eggs
2/3 cup (135 g) vanilla sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup (125 g) hazelnuts, toasted and cooled

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl.

3. In a small bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, slowly add the liquids, and mix well with you hands or a dough whisk. If necessary, add additional flour to form a firm and workable dough. Add the hazelnuts and work them evenly into the dough.

4. Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces. Flour your hands and carefully roll each piece into and oval cylinder about 2 inches wide and 12 inches long. Carefully transfer each cylinder to the parchment-lined baking sheet. 

5. Place the baking sheet in the middle of the oven and bake until the dough is slightly risen and an even golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and transfer the cylinders to a cooling rack for 10 minutes.

6. Transfer each cylinder to a cutting board and slice the biscotti on a sharp diagonal (45-degree angle) at 1/2 inch intervals. Stand the biscotti upright on the baking sheet about 1/2 inch apart. Return the baking sheet to the center of the oven and bake until the biscotti are a deep golden brown, about 15 minutes more. Remove from the oven and transfer the biscotti to a rack to cool thoroughly. The cookies should be dry and crisp. Once cooled they can be store in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

Rosemary Shortbread for Spring

I'm happy to announce that the eighth season on the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market will start on Sunday June 4th from 10 AM to 2 PM on the corner of Agate St. and 19th Ave. Please mark your calendars and spread the word. 

Today's respite from the rain inspired some springtime baking in our household. When I asked my son what he wanted to bake, he said "something with flowers" and then, reflecting that the rosemary was flowering, suggested something with rosemary. I consulted the New York Times Cooking site, and came up with these rosemary shortbread cookies from Melissa Clark. 

I was a little skeptical that the final product might taste too medicinal, so I halved the recipe, using just one stick of butter and a loaf pan rather than a brownie pan. In fact these shortbread cookies were perfectly delicious with a subtle but distinctive taste of spring. 

Rosemary Shortbread

from Melissa Clark of the New York Times 

2 cups all-purpose flour
⅔ cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon plus 1 pinch kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted cold butter, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 to 2 teaspoons rosemary, chestnut or other dark, full-flavored honey (optional)

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. In a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar, rosemary and salt. Add butter, and honey if desired, and pulse to fine crumbs. Pulse a few more times until some crumbs start to come together, but don't overprocess. Dough should not be smooth.


2. Press dough into an ungreased 8- or 9-inch-square baking pan or 9-inch pie pan. Prick dough all over with a fork. Bake until golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes for 9-inch pan, 45 to 50 minutes for 8-inch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Cut into squares, bars or wedges while still warm.

Apple Marzipan Cake and Gingerbread Creatures

2016 has not stacked up to be the most beloved year, but I didn't want to let it slip away without documenting a few personal holiday baking triumphs. Above, from Luisa Weiss' Classic German Baking (a much appreciated Christmas cookbook present), is a towering apple marzipan cake. Infused with almond paste, and with apples both cubed within and splayed artfully on top with a glaze of apricot jam, it evoked powerful childhood taste memories of afternoon outings to elegant German cafes for the ritual of Kaffee und Kucken. The recipe can be found here.

In anticipation of Santa's visit, we had fun making gingerbread creatures, following the recipe from the Joy of Cooking (the classic version). When we ran out of patience for rolling and cookie cutting, we used up the final dough with free form snails, pretzels, and a friendly mole skink, sporting fetching icing spots.

Best wishes for peace and happiness in the new year.

Gingerbread Men 

from Joy of Cooking (makes 2 sheets of cookies)

gingerbread dough
1/4 cup butter
1/2 brown sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/3 tsp salt
1/4 cup water

icing
1/4 cup confectioner sugar
a few drops of water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Blend until creamy the butter and brown sugar and then beat in the dark molasses. Sift the flour and then resift with the remaining dry ingredients. Add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture in about 3 parts, alternating with 1/4 cup water. You may have to work in the last of the flour mixture by hand. 

3. Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness, cut out shapes with cookie cutters and place them on parchment paper lined cookie sheets. You can combine the scraps and chill in the freezer for a few minutes before rolling out again. When you run out of patience, turn the last scraps into hand-formed shapes like snails. If you like, decorate them with dried fruit such as currents and cranberries. 

4. Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, according to their thickness. You can test them for doneness by pressing the dough with your finger. If it springs back after pressing, the gingerbread cookies are ready to be cooled on a rack. 

5. To decorate them with icing, stir the confectioner sugar and a few drops of water together in a small bowl to make a paste. Apply the icing with a toothpick or pipe through a sandwich bag with a tiny opening snipped in the corner. Allow to dry. The cookies will keep for a week or so if stored in an airtight container.

Hazelnut Cloud Cookies

With all the anticipation and preparations for the holidays, it's hard not to feel a little bit disappointed with the actual event, as my daughter did when the promised Christmas snowfall in Boston yielded only enough for this miniature snowman peeking quizzically around the porch pillar of my childhood home. We all have our hopes for the holidays and each celebration will only be an approximation of those expectations. My son had covered his bases with his list for Santa Claus: "a magic wand and some money", but got neither, while I suspect that my daughter's fervent wish was simply to be able to believe in Santa Claus for one more year, a tall order when Santa had to navigate between Eugene and Boston and between antithetical German and American Christmas traditions.  

Ensconced here in the artifacts of my childhood, I couldn't help pine for the incomparable flavors of the homemade German Christmas cookies we used to receive each year from my grandmother's home in Franconia, half of them crushed into an etherial mixture of sweet, nutty, buttery crumbs that I used to scoop and gobble by the handful. In a post-holiday attempt to perk up my daughter and recreate some of those flavors, I tried this recipe for powdery nut cookies, similar to her favorite pecan cloud cookies from the Eugene City Bakery.

The cookies are made from a simple butter dough sweetened with powdered sugar and packed with ground nuts (back in Eugene, I would use our supply of hazelnuts from Thistledown Farm). This batch served as an accompaniment to a tea party with toy china my son unearthed from my old bedroom. As we nibbled our dainty nut clouds, real snow clouds gathered in the afternoon sky and by bedtime enough snow had accumulated to ensure that real-sized snowmen will be built tomorrow. 

Hazelnut Cloud Cookies

adapted from Epicurious via Smitten Kitchen

makes about 4 dozen cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temperature, cut into cubes

1/2 cup powdered sugar for the dough and about 1 1/2 cups for coating

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup hazelnuts (or use pecans or walnuts or a combination of nuts)

2 cups all purpose flour

1/8 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1. In a dry skillet or a toaster oven, lightly toast the nuts until fragrant. If using hazelnuts, roll them in a dishtowel to remove most of their skin. Combine the nuts and the flour in a food processor and blend into a fine powder (including the flour will prevent the nuts from turning into nut butter). Remove the nut flour to a bowl.

2. Put the butter in the food processor and process until well-creamed. Add the 1/2 cup powdered sugar and vanilla extract and process to incorporate. Now add the nut flour and process into a stiff dough. Transfer the dough back into the nut flour bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. Prior to baking the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover two baking pans with parchment paper or silicone mats. Scoop out large teaspoons of dough, roll them into 1 inch balls in your palms, and place them on the baking sheets in about three rows and four columns. Place in the oven. Chill the remaining half of the dough while the first batch of cookies bake. After 10 minutes, rotate the baking sheets 180 degrees and from top to bottom oven rack. Remove the cookies after about 18 minutes, when their bottoms are golden brown and their tops are pale golden.

4. Let the cookies cool on the rack for about five minutes. Fill a shallow bowl with 3/4 cup powdered sugar, and mix in cinnamon, if using. Roll each cookie in the powdered sugar and transfer to a serving plate. If you like, sift the remaining powdered sugar over the cookies to give them a final dusting. Bake the second batch of cookies as above (or you can store the dough to bake later). These cookies store well at room temperature in an airtight container for several days.

Strawberry Pinwheels

If you are tired of the cloyingly sweet Halloween candy kicking around your house, a good antidote is some fresh baked treats, such as these strawberry pinwheels from Liana Krissoff's Canning for a New Generation. The dough is flavored with ground cardamom and just a hint of sugar and is the perfect vessel for homemade strawberry preserves or some of Sweetwater Farm's strawberry spread, if you are lucky enough to have any left from the summer.

The assembly of these pinwheels may look a bit fussy, but it's actually quite simple and forgiving and a fun activity for kids who need some distractions now that the excitement of Halloween preparations is over. I let some rye flour slip into the dough (because it had proved so tasty in these cookies) and rather than chopped nuts as a topping I used this streusel, which meant these cookies could be packed for a snack at my daughter's nut-free school. These treats will fill your house with the delicious smell of baked yeast dough, and when everyone is sated, you can surreptitiously tossed out the rest of the Halloween candy.

Cardamom Pinwheel Danishes

adapted from Liana Krissoff's Canning for a New Generation

for about 24 pinwheels
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp instant yeast
1 cup rye flour
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp pure kosher salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus about 2 Tbsp softened butter for the filling
About 1/3 cup strawberry jam

for the streusel

2 Tbsp cup flour

1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp white sugar
pinch of salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp butter

1. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, yeast, and 3/4 cup warm water until smooth. 

2. In a large bowl, sift the flours. Stir in the salt, sugar, and cardamom. Then cut in the butter until the pieces of butter are about the size of peas. Now make a well in the center and pour in the egg mixture. Gradually incorporate the dry into the wet ingredients. You could also form this dough in a food processor.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and soft but not sticky. Clean the bowl, return the dough, and let it rise in a warm spot until doubled in volume, about 1 1/2 hours.

4. To make the streusel, combine the dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse to mix. Then add the vanilla and butter and pulse until it is a coarse crumb. Reserve.

5. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

6. Divide the dough into quarters. Roll one out into and approximately 9 inch long and 6 inch wide rectangle and cut it into half lengthwise and thirds widthwise to produce six 3 x 3 inch squares. Take one square and cut a slit from each corner diagonal toward the center, stopping about 1/2 inch before the center. Spread a bit of softened butter in the center of each square and spoon 1 scant tsp jam on top of the butter. Bring every other point (four total) to the center of the pastry and pinch them together tightly over the jam. Transfer to a parchment paper-covered baking sheet and sprinkle with streusel. Repeat with the remaining dough. 

7. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until nicely browned. Let cool on wire racks. Enjoy.

Buckwheat Butter Cookies with Cocoa Nibs

Once you've tasted it, the combination of buckwheat and chocolate is kind of addictive. With some remaining buckwheat flour from Lonesome Whistle Farm, these buckwheat butter cookies with cocoa nibs caught my eye here and here. Cocoa nibs, I discovered, can be procured from the bulk spice section of the Market of Choice.

I don't have much patience for cookie cutters (unless baking for Santa), so I liked the option of rolling a log of buttery cookie dough and slicing it up. It felt like working with play dough, but the final product was downright sophisticated. The subtle nutty flavor of the buckwheat and the charming restraint of the cocoa nibs paired perfectly with a cup of tea and freshly picked strawberries. Enjoy these refined treats while fantasizing about the London Olympics, but by the end of the weekend our neighborhood will be back to normal and ready to host the world famous Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market, starting July 8.

Buckwheat Butter Cookies with Cocoa Nibs

Adapted from Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert

1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup buckwheat flour
½ lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1/3 cup cocoa nibs
1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours.

2. With a handheld or stand mixer, beat the butter with the sugar and salt until smooth and creamy but not fluffy, about 1 minute. Add the nibs and vanilla, and beat to incorporate. Add the flours all at once, and beat on low speed until just incorporated. The mixture will seem very dry and pebbly at first, but keep beating, and it will slowly moisten and darken (as the buckwheat flour is absorbed) and come together. The dough will be very thick. You can also make the dough in a food processor, but incorporate the nibs at the end by hand. 

3. Form the dough into a long (12” or 13”) log about 2 inches in diameter. Because the dough is so thick, I find it easiest to do this by pinching off hunks of dough from the bowl and lining them up on a large sheet of plastic wrap to form a log, then massaging and pressing them together to seal. Wrap well and refrigerate at least two hours, or overnight.

4. If you have refrigerated the dough overnight, remove it from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before you want to bake the cookies. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners.

5. When the dough feels slightly softened - it should have just a hint of give when you press it with a fingertip - unwrap it and place it on a cutting board. Using a thin, sharp knife, carefully cut the dough into ¼-inch-thick slices. Place slices on the prepared baking sheets, spacing each cookie about 1 ½ inches apart.

6. Bake until cookies just begin to color around the edges, about 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the sheet pans from top to bottom and front to back midway through. Transfer to wire racks, and cool the cookies on the baking sheets (or slide the parchment onto the rack to free up the pans). Cool completely before eating or storing. Repeat with remaining dough.

Store the cookies in an airtight container.

Yield: about 50-55 small cookies

Update: I experimenting with making a gluten-free version of these cookies using only buckwheat flour and I'm happy to report that they were extremely tasty.

Swedish Rye Cookies

My son, born four years ago on Winter Solstice, is the antithesis of winter. From the moment he arrived, he has been a fiery ball of energy with the sunniest of personalities. Defying the laws of Mendel, he seems to have inherited only his father's Swedish genes, and has a head of white blond hair the color of a field of grain in the height of summer. With a new supply of rye flour from Lonesome Whistle Farm, I recruited my little Swede to help me test out this recipe for Swedish rye cookies from 101 Cookbooks.

The recipe calls for a combination of butter and cream cheese, which gives the final cookies a pleasantly tart flavor. The dough was quite easy to work with, and in no time we had a herd of reindeers.

The poor things never knew what hit them when they encountered my son's blizzard of colored sugars. Luckily, the cookies themselves are not too sweet and could stand the heavy drifts of decoration. We all liked the subtle rye flavor and we think Santa will too. These will definitely become part of our regular holiday baking repertoire.

Swedish Rye Cookies

from 101 Cookbooks

1 cup (106 g) rye flour (from Lonesome Whistle Farm)

1 cup (120 g) pastry flour (such as soft white winter wheat flour from Camas Country Mill)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup (113 g) cream cheese, at room temperature

1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup (100 g) fine sugar

1. Sift together the flours and salt.

2. In a mixer or food processor, cream together the cream cheese, butter, and sugar until very smooth. Then combine in the flour mixture, but avoid over-mixing. Gather the dough into a ball, flatten into a disc, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut into shapes. Place on parchment paper-covered cookie sheets and dust with colored sugar. Bake for about 10 minutes until just golden around the edges. At this point you can dust them with powdered sugar, if they haven't already been thoroughly sugared.


Other recipes for locally grown grains
Barley Risotto with Grilled Vegetables
Buckwheat Blini
Buckwheat Crepes
Gluten-Free Waffles
Quinoa Salad with Roasted Beets and Kale
Teff Grain and Ricotta Pancakes with Apple Topping
Wheatberry Tabbouleh with Green Beans and Feta
Wheatberries with Snap Peas

Christmas Baking

What I look forward to most about Christmas is all the excitement and preparations leading up to the actual holiday, and best of all the smells of holiday baking. I especially love the yeasty fragrance of Christmas stollen baking in the oven. This holiday bread is laden with dried fruits, almonds, and butter, so that the yeast has a Herculean task in making the dough rise. My mother always gets trans-Atlantic tips and encouragement from her family in Germany since her stollen dough is several time zones behind. One year my parents did the stollen baking with friends, and while my father diligently kneaded his half of the dough, their friend gave his half a few perfunctory pats in between sips of Gluhwein. I distinctly remember when the two loaves came out of the oven: one nicely plump and the other sadly flat. I was outraged when my parents felt compelled to claim the flat one as theirs and my mother pretended to chastise my father for his poor kneading effort. With a food processor, the kneading is a lot easier, but we had to adapt our standby recipe from the Joy of Cooking (the 1975 edition) to fit into the machine: using 2/3 of the original recipe and preparing this in two batches.

The first thing to do to coax the yeast along is to mix it with warm milk until it's dissolved and frothy.

The buttery dough has just enough flour to come together in a ball,

which you leave in a warm place to rise until it's doubled in bulk.

Then you have to knead in the goodies: toasted almond slivers, and fruit. Over the years, our family has dropped the candied fruit and settled on plain raisins, plumped up in a little warm water, as the nicest accompaniment to the yeasty crumb, but one can add any variety of candied or dried fruit. It's always a challenge to get these incorporated into the dough, which seems to shed raisins like an overexcited labrador sheds fur.

Now this heavily laden dough, shaped into loaves, needs to rise again, and this time the best strategy is to proof it: cover the loaves with a clean dish towel and nestle them in the oven with a pan of steaming hot water underneath. (Just don't forget about them and start preheating the oven for cookies). Finally, after a day of pampering, the dough is baked until golden brown, and covered with a snowfall of confectioner's sugar. This is the perfect treat for Christmas morning to tide everyone over while the presents are unwrapped.

Of course, one wouldn't expect Santa to deliver any presents if he weren't rewarded for his troubles with a plate of home baked cookies. In our household, we've developed the tradition of leaving Santa a Jewish delicacy: rugelach. They are fun for kids to make, and Santa seems to like them because they always get eaten. The recipe comes from Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook, which uses cottage cheese for a surprisingly malleable and ultimately flaky dough. She gives a number of filling suggestions, but our favorite is hazelnuts and chocolate with cinnamon sugar.

The trick is to freeze the chocolate chips so that they don't melt while being pulverized into a coarse crumb.

Then you roll out the dough, sprinkle on the filling, and slice it like a pizza.

Roll the cookies from the center to the outside, and sprinkle any shed filling over the assembled cookies.

Then bake until golden brown. Make sure to reserve some for Santa before serving them for Christmas Eve dessert.

Christmas Stollen

adapted from the Joy of Cooking

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

5 cups flour, plus more for handling the dough

1 cup milk, just below scalding

2 Tbsp + 3/4 tsp (3 packages) yeast

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup toasted slivered almonds

1 1/2 cup dried or candied fruit, including or exclusively raisins plumped in warm water and drained.

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Prepare the dough in 2 batches in a food processor, combining the butter, sugar, and egg, then mixing in the flour and pouring in the yeast mixture while the processor is running. If the dough is too sticky to handle, add a little more flour. Combine the two batches, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place for several hours, until doubled in bulk.

2. Knead in the nuts and fruit, using a little more flour if the dough is too sticky. Shape into two loaves and place on greased cookie sheets. Cover with clean dish towels and place in the oven beneath a pan of steaming hot water. Allow to rise several hours until doubled in size.

3. Remove the dough, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and bake the loaves for about 45 minutes until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped with a finger nail. Cool on a rack. Dust with confectioner sugar. Serve slices as is or toasted.

Rugelach

adapted from Mollie Katzen

for the dough

1/2 cup (1 stick butter)

1 cup cottage cheese

1 1/3 cup flour, and more for handling

1/4 tsp salt

for the filling

1/4 cup hazelnuts

1/4 cup chocolate chips, frozen

scan 1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1. Chop the filling ingredients in a food processor until they have the consistency of a coarse crumb. Reserve.

2. Wipe out the food processor and prepare the dough, processing the ingredients until they come together into a ball. If the dough is very sticky, add a little more flour. Remove the dough and shape into two balls. Wrap in plastic wrap or a silicone baking mat and chill  for a few minutes. 

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove one dough ball from the refrigerator, roll into about a 12 inch diameter circle, sprinkle with half of the filling, and slice into 12 slices. Roll each slice from the center to the perimeter and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Sprinkle any filling that fell out over the rolled cookies. Prepare the second ball like the first. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown.

Merry Christmas!