The Passionate Baker

Swedish Kringle is a wonderful light almond pastry with a buttery, flaky crust, and is topped with a a light almond glaze and chopped almonds. This pastry is great any time of day.  In the morning with coffee or after dinner with a glass of milk.

If you like almond flavoring, you’ll love this.

Kougin-amann (pronounced [ˌkwiɲ aˈmãn]; pl. kouignoù-amann) is a Breton cake.  The name comes from the Breton language word for cake (kouign) and butter (amann). It is a round multi-layered cake, originally made with bread dough containing layers of butter and sugar folded in, similar in fashion to puff pastry albeit with fewer layers. The cake is slowly baked until the butter puffs up the dough (creating the layers) and the sugar becomes caramelized. The result is similar to a muffin-shaped, caramelized croissant.

Kouign-amann is a specialty of the town of Douarnenez in Finistère, Brittany, where it originated around 1860.

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A Bakewell tart is an English confection consisting of a shortcrust pastry shell with a  layers of jam, and top with frangipane.  Baked off to a golden brown and topped is powder sugar.  It is a variant of the Bakewell pudding, closely associated with the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire.

​The tart can be made with a variety of jams or compotes.  I like the seedless black raspberry, but I also like to change it up with whatever fruit is in season.

The oldest Linzer torte-known written recipe was in 1653, and similarly Linzer cookies use the same recipe as Linzertorte but presented in cookie form. It is a cookie sandwich: the top cookie, dusted with confectioners sugar, has a cutout so the preserves are visible, (known as Linzer eyes).  While the traditional cutout is circular, all sorts of shapes, such as hearts, are also popular.

During the non-Christmas season, I twist it up and make them with fresh chopped rosemary in the dough and fill them with fresh lemon curd.

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