This is a fine Danish dessert that I fondly remember from our holiday visit to Copenhagen. I already blogged how truly impressed I was with Denmark and how unique and wonderful their pastries are. You can follow the link at the bottom of this post if you want to learn more about this trip.
Tree logs, or “træstammer” how Danes call it, is a marzipan based dessert. Unique as it is, to make it even better, this recipe does not include any refined sugar at all. Instead dry pitted dates provide subtle sweetness.
There is no baking involved except melting a chocolate for a final finishing touches. If you store it in a sealed container it will retain its freshness for a long time. It is a great little dessert and makes an amazing companion to a morning or afternoon coffee.
The recipe has been adapted from Nordic Food & Living blog.
My previous blog post: Danish pastry (Spandauer)
| Prep Time | 40 minutes |
| Passive Time | 20 minutes |
| Servings |
servings
|
- 100 g natural almonds skinned
- 45 g pitted dates
- 1 tbsp cold water
- 15 g hazelnuts
- 15 g pecans
- 125 g pitted dates
- 4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp golden Rum
Ingredients
Marzipan
Cake
Coating
|
|
- In a medium size sauce pan bring water to a boil. Add almonds and bring it to a full boil again.
- Take off the heat and let almonds soak for 2 minutes.
- Drain the hot water and pour cold water in the sauce pan. Skin the almonds immediately by squeezing them between your fingers.
- Pat dry skinned almonds with a paper towel, spread them over a parchment paper and let dry completely.
- Using a food processor grind almonds into almond flour. This might take couple of minutes.
- Add dates to the food processor and run it at high speed for a few minutes, until sticky dough consistency is obtained. Depending on how dry the dates are you might need to add some cold water to obtain the dough consistency. I did not need to add water.
- Cover and store in the fridge.
- Using a food processor grind nuts into a flour. This might take couple of minutes.
- Add dates, cocoa, rum to the food processor and run it at high speed until sticky dough consistency is obtained. Cover and refrigerate for about 15 minutes
- While cocoa based dough is in the fridge, roll out cool marzipan between two parchment pepper sheets. Roll the marzipan in a rectangular shape about 305 mm (12") long and about 2-3 mm (1/10") thick, set aside.
- Using your hands play and roll cocoa dough into a 305 mm (12") long cylinder shape. The diameter will be approximately 20 mm (3/4").
- Place the cocoa dough cylinder on top of the marzipan flat sheet. Roll the marzipan tightly to the cocoa cylinder until is completely wrapped.
- Cut the assembled cylinder into 8 even length pieces, each about 38 mm (1 1/2") long.
- Fine cut chocolate on a cutting board.
- Over a double boiler melt half of the cut chocolate. Add other part of the chocolate and whisk until is completely melted.
- Dip each side of 8 cut marzipan log pieces in the melted chocolate. Place each piece on a parchment paper until chocolate sets. Keep stored in air tight container.
No Comments