Napolitain Biscuits

Napolitain Biscuits 

Its that time of the years when I feel happy even if I want to be grumpy. Quite honestly Christmas ushers in the time for delightful lunches and dinners but my favourite time of the day is the tea-time when the tabled and laden with a variety of savoury puffs and sandwiches and buttery biscuits. Ah well buttery biscuits do never go out of style.

This is part of Patience Brewer's Cookie Exchange event. Do visit their special page on Christmas Ornaments for beautiful handcrafted gifts this festive season.

I have recently purchased the Big Fat book of collected recipes from Larousse Gastronomique. Its one of those books which is what a passionate cook cherishes. I have read and re read and marked numerous recipes and when I saw the recipe for Napolitain biscuits I was amazed because I had previously made a very similar biscuit which uses almond flour and butter and is a delight to eat. The only difference was the use of egg yolks and the decoration with Jam.

So I made a boozy Brandied Strawberry jam and then went on to make these fabulously crisp yet buttery biscuits.

This is part of the event 'Kickstarting Christmas' which I am taking part with Pritha from Guilt-Free and don't forget to check out her fabulous Strawberry Pistachio Cake.

Recipe Adapted from : Larousse Gastronomique

Yields about 16 to 18 Biscuits :-

150gm of chilled butter
128 gm of all purpose flour
175gm of almond flour  (I blanched about 175gm of almonds and then dried it toasted it and ground it)
130gm of castor sugar
2 small egg yolks
Jam for decoration

For the Brandied Strawberry Jam :-

1 kilogram strawberry washed and hulled
300gm sugar
Juice from 1 lemon + the seeds tied in a cloth
1/2 cup brandy


Make your strawberry jam a day ahead. Macerate the strawberry with the sugar. Just mix it and leave it on its own for about 2 hours or overnight. Bring this to a roaring boil and skim the foam and let it boil and add the juice from the lemon and add the cloth in which you have tired the seeds and let it boil on medium heat till it sets. To check whether it has set, dab a spoonful onto a chilled plate and if it stays put then its done.  If its runny  boil it on high heat for a few minutes till it sets. I like mine set but soft and spreadable. never ever over boil the jam else it will become hard.  The boiling process takes me around 15 minutes or so.                                                                                                        


For the Napolitain biscuits :-

Finely chop 150gm of chilled butter  and mix it with the flour till you get a bread crumb like consistency and then mix in the sugar , almond flour and finally the egg yolk and quickly make a smooth dough and put it in the refrigerator for 1 hour and then take it out and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to a 1 cm thick dough and cut round shapes with a cookie cutter and bake at 200C for 10 minutes to 12 minutes.

let it cool down completely and then decorate with jam.

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