Königsschnitten (King’s slices) are delicious cookies, very similar to Florentines, with a shortbread base instead of the chocolate. Here is the recipe for Königsschnitten and a few tips for handling your highness.
Königsschnitten are shortbread cookies baked with an almond sugar mixture spread on top. This caramelizes nicely on top while baking. And it contains cream, which reminded me altogether then but very much of Bienenstichkuchen (bee sting cake, a famous cake in Germany topped with whipped cream or custard and caramelised almonds on top). Only in the shape of a cookie.
Baking cookies in India
I bake and cook everything in India (more about the why here). Therefore, it is always a bit uncertain whether recipes turn out successfully. Especially with cookies it is a bit difficult, because they contain a lot of butter and therefore the dough is softer with higher room temperature and sticks more often.
This can be solved to some extent with air conditioning. However, this is usually not in the kitchen. Therefore, I must either process the dough at the dining table or somehow deal with the fact that it is softer. Most of the time, with a little more effort and composure, it works out quite well. The same with these cookies. What I didn’t consider, however, was the humidity. Unfortunately, this caused the caramel to not set properly.
However, I was able to improve this somewhat by placing them uncovered on a tray in the refrigerator. The cold air removes moisture from the cookies this way. They certainly didn’t turn out as good as if I had baked them in Germany, but they did improve significantly
What you also have to consider is the effect of humidity on baking temperature and duration. Logically, I always bake cookies before Christmas, so it’s always reasonably similar there. But I have baked a shortbread pie crust before and during the monsoon. With higher humidity, you need slightly higher temperatures in the oven! Especially if you want pastries to brown. Pastries don’t brown until they dry in the oven. And that takes longer with high humidity or needs more heat. Didn’t know that either, something new that I learned 🙂 .
Remove stuck caramel that got hard
Other than that, I can also give the tip to line the edges of the tray well with baking paper to prevent the caramel from sticking to the tray. I also recommend to remove the edge immediately from the tray, if it is stuck. And then after 3-4 minutes, pull everything off the baking sheet and clean it immediately.
I didn’t do this on the first tray and had a lot of stuck, hard caramel on the tray. If this also happens to you, there is a trick to remove it easily: Put water on your tray and put it back in the oven at 180 °C for another 4 minutes. After that, it will be soft and easy to clean.
Königsschnitten – Austrian Christmas cookies with caramelised almonds
Ingredients
For the dough
- 330 g flour
- 1 pinch salt
- 220 g butter
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 pck. vanilla sugar alternatively vanilla extract and 10 g sugar
For the almond paste
- 200 g whipped cream
- 100 g honey
- 300 g sugar
- 100 g butter
- 300 g almonds peeled and sliced
Instructions
The dough
- First, mix the flour with the salt, add cool pieces of butter and knead it all together with the sugar, egg, vanilla sugar, salt and grated lemon peel to form a dough.
- Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for an hour.
- Now preheat the oven to 180°C and roll out the dough to a thickness of about 2 mm on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
- Prick the dough several times with a fork so that it does not curve upwards during baking.
- Bake for 3-4 minutes on the middle shelf.
The almond paste
- Boil the whipped cream together with honey, sugar and butter once and mix in the almonds.
- Let it boil down a bit while stirring.
- Then spread the almond mixture on the dough and bake on the middle rack for about 12-14 minutes until light brown.
- The actual baking time depends on how much you cooked the almond paste beforehand.
- About 15 minutes after baking, cut everything into lozenges or slices. It should still be lukewarm.
- Let everything cool down and store in an air-tight container.
Please rate my recipe before you leave 🙂:
Source of the recipe for Königsschnitten: https://www.regionale-rezepte.at/de/rezept/262/Koenigsschnitten.htm
Baked with lots of love ♥ on From zero to curry.
