These marzipan and chocolate cookies are truly perfect for Christmas! And if you start with one you will hardly stop with the second 🙂
They are based on orange-flavoured shortcrust pastry, covered in dark chocolate and have a marzipan star on top. The combination of the three flavors and the different consistencies make them truly magnificent and therefore, even if they are a little laborious, don’t miss them!
Ingredients
Shortcrust pastry
- 200 g of 00 flour
- 150 g of butter
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 pinch of salt
- vanilla
- the grated zest of 1 orange
Covering and decoration:
- 150g of dark chocolate
- 1 knob of butter (optional)
- Marzipan (you can find ready-made blocks)
- A little of icing sugar
Cut the butter into cubes and place it in a large bowl. Add the egg yolks, sugar, grated lemon zest and pinch of salt and mix the ingredients quickly with your hands.
Quickly add the flour to the mixture, without working it too much, otherwise the butter will heat up too much. Form a floured ball and wrap it in cling film: let it rest in the fridge for half an hour and then roll it out with a rolling pin to a height of 3-4 mm.
Make round biscuits with a diameter of about 5 cm (I also used a star mold of the same size) and place them on a baking tray and put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
Bake at 170°C and cook for 10-12 minutes until the edges just start to color (they must remain white), remove from the oven and let cool completely before touching them.
At this point, chop the dark chocolate in the mixer until you obtain chocolate chips in very small pieces. Melt in a bain-marie (with the butter if you want) until the chocolate is melted and soft.
With a little patience and a teaspoon or a small round knife, take a small quantity of chocolate and cover the biscuits evenly (about 2-3 mm thick with chocolate coating), if necessary tap them gently on the counter to level the chocolate . This part is a bit laborious and requires a bit of manual skill. If it’s your first attempt, I recommend preferring round biscuits, it’s simpler.
Roll out a little marzipan on a surface dusted with icing sugar, using a rolling pin (if it is very compact, work it first with your hands to soften it) to obtain a smooth, 2-3 mm thin sheet. Cut out many stars with a small cutter (about 2-3 cm in diameter).
Gently place the stars in the center of the biscuits while the chocolate is still soft and leave to solidify completely.
Here are the COOKIES WITH MARZIPAN STARS! Beautiful, but also delicious!
p.s. if you find already coloured green marzipan you can also create a variant by cutting out mini Christmas trees instead of stars (you need a small tree cutter)
