I wanted to include some fancy-looking desserts on the menu for my boss's farewell party last week, so I turned to Flo Braker's Sweet Miniatures: The Art of Making Bite-Sized Desserts. At first I was thinking of making miniature tarts, but many of tart recipes in the cookbook do not hold up very well and I needed to be able to make everything in advance. Finally I decided to make Braker's "Neapolitan Wedges," which are three layers of butter cookies sandwiched around fruit buttercream, covered in chocolate glaze, and decorated with royal icing.
There are a few steps to making these cookies with waiting times in between; I did it over three days. The butter cookie is the same recipe that Braker uses as the crust for her miniature tarts, and you can make the dough quickly in the food processor by combining flour, salt, sugar, chilled cubed butter, an egg, and vanilla. You divide the dough in half, roll each portion into a 8-inch by 14-inch rectangle, and chill the dough for at least two hours.
I chilled my dough rectangles for a day before cutting each one into three equal-sized strips approximately 2.5-inches by 13.5-inches, and baking them until firm but still pale. When the strips are cool, you spread on a thin layer of fruit buttercream and stack the cookies. The buttercream is supposed to be a mixture of red currant jelly and butter but I used raspberry preserves instead. Just the buttery pastry alone with the raspberry buttercream was incredibly delicious. I had baked many of the cookie scraps that remained after cutting the dough into strips, and I couldn't resist eating all of them slathered with leftover buttercream.
I chilled the stacked layers of pastry and buttercream for a day before finishing the cookies; the recipe says the longer you chill them at this stage (up to two days), the more the moisture from the buttercream absorbs into the cookies and makes them easier to slice. Finally, I coated the tops of the cookie strips with a chocolate glaze (made from bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and corn syrup), piped on stripes of royal icing (made from egg white, powdered sugar, and cream of tartar) while the glaze was still wet, and dragged a toothpick through the icing to form a marbled pattern. The recipe instructs you to dye the royal icing pink but I went with yellow instead to fit in with the white, black, and gold color scheme of the party.
I had tried to spread the chocolate glaze carefully to get precise edge-to-edge coverage but some glaze spilled over the sides. I used an offset spatula to try and straighten up the edges, but the finish wasn't completely clean. In the photo above, you can clearly see a pink layer of raspberry buttercream between the bottom two cookie layers, but a smear of chocolate glaze obscures the buttercream between the middle and top layer.
After the chocolate glaze was completely set I cut the cookies into pieces one inch wide. The reason the recipe calls the cookies "wedges" is that you're supposed to cut the cookies at an angle to form trapezoidal shapes. I decided to just cut them straight across to keep things simpler and more uniform. Despite the chocolate smears, the cookies looked impressive and I thought they were perfect for a special occasion. The cookies also tasted fantastic -- although to be honest, I'm not sure if the chocolate glaze is the best idea because it competed with the flavor of the buttercream. The bright, fruity, delicious raspberry buttercream. Even so, these elegant cookies were delightful and I thought they were absolutely worth the time and care required to make them.
Recipe: "Neapolitan Wedges" from Sweet Miniatures: The Art of Making Bite-Size Desserts by Flo Braker.
There are a few steps to making these cookies with waiting times in between; I did it over three days. The butter cookie is the same recipe that Braker uses as the crust for her miniature tarts, and you can make the dough quickly in the food processor by combining flour, salt, sugar, chilled cubed butter, an egg, and vanilla. You divide the dough in half, roll each portion into a 8-inch by 14-inch rectangle, and chill the dough for at least two hours.
I chilled my dough rectangles for a day before cutting each one into three equal-sized strips approximately 2.5-inches by 13.5-inches, and baking them until firm but still pale. When the strips are cool, you spread on a thin layer of fruit buttercream and stack the cookies. The buttercream is supposed to be a mixture of red currant jelly and butter but I used raspberry preserves instead. Just the buttery pastry alone with the raspberry buttercream was incredibly delicious. I had baked many of the cookie scraps that remained after cutting the dough into strips, and I couldn't resist eating all of them slathered with leftover buttercream.
I had tried to spread the chocolate glaze carefully to get precise edge-to-edge coverage but some glaze spilled over the sides. I used an offset spatula to try and straighten up the edges, but the finish wasn't completely clean. In the photo above, you can clearly see a pink layer of raspberry buttercream between the bottom two cookie layers, but a smear of chocolate glaze obscures the buttercream between the middle and top layer.
After the chocolate glaze was completely set I cut the cookies into pieces one inch wide. The reason the recipe calls the cookies "wedges" is that you're supposed to cut the cookies at an angle to form trapezoidal shapes. I decided to just cut them straight across to keep things simpler and more uniform. Despite the chocolate smears, the cookies looked impressive and I thought they were perfect for a special occasion. The cookies also tasted fantastic -- although to be honest, I'm not sure if the chocolate glaze is the best idea because it competed with the flavor of the buttercream. The bright, fruity, delicious raspberry buttercream. Even so, these elegant cookies were delightful and I thought they were absolutely worth the time and care required to make them.
Recipe: "Neapolitan Wedges" from Sweet Miniatures: The Art of Making Bite-Size Desserts by Flo Braker.
Comments