Danish Napoleon Hat
These delicious little Danish cookies are called Napoleon Hats (remember Napoleon Bonaparte, the French dude with the funny hat). Napoleon Hats were some of my favorite cookies growing up, still is. Whenever we go home to visit I always pick up some of these cookies at the local Bakery, along with a lot of other Danish pastries. These cookies are really easy and fun to make, oh and did I mention that they’re delicious.
Ingredients:
7 oz Marzipan (Odense)
1 3/4 cup flour
1 stick + 1 tbsp. butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 egg yolk
1/2 stick vanilla bean
5 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
Directions:
Break up butter into flour and place in a food processor. Pulse to blend. Slice open the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Add powdered sugar, egg yolk and vanilla seeds to flour mixture. Blend until a smooth powdery mix. Remove mixture from food processor and press it together to form a dough ball. Place dough in refrigerator for 30 minutes to cool. Place dough in between two pieces of cling wrap and roll out to 3 mm thickness. Cut out circles using a glass approximate 2 1/4 inch in size. Roll a small ball of marzipan and place in center of round dough. Lift up dough circle and marzipan ball and gently squeeze edges closed using your thumbs and index fingers to form three points (like a Napoleon Hat). Place on parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on baking sheet.
Melt 5 oz. semi-sweet chocolate over a water bath. Once cookies are cooled, dip each corner and bottom of cookie in the melted chocolate. Place on baking rack or parchment paper to let chocolate set.
Ingredients
Marzipan ball on dough. Gently fold up dough to form three points leaving it a little open at the top.
Source: My Danish Kitchen
Thanks for sharing all these delicious Danish recipes with us! I am v. interested in Scandinavian baking and I am familiar with a lot of cakes and biscuits but this one is new to me.
Keep up the good work!
Gabriela
napoleon is french not danish
Correct, did you read the write-up? The cookies are very popular in Denmark, so are Napolean cakes btw.
Except for the marzipan, these look very similar – if not identical – to Hamantaschen, a traditional Jewish pastry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamantaschen
Very nice site and recipes, keep it up!
Thank you for leaving a comment, my very first one
What a great idea, little kids could help make the Napoleon Hats and learn about Napoleon at the same time. That would be memorable.
I love Marzepan… one of my favorites… and what a cute hat idea… I think this would a great way to introduce kids to Napoleon… through hats and not traditional Napoleons that look nothing like him