My Danish Kitchen

Best Kranskage

I was making Kransekage again the other day and decided to try a new recipe. It turned out to be the best tasting Kransekage recipe I have come across so far. It is less dense than the Kransekage I posted about earlier, the dough is softer so you can pipe it out and the finished product is slightly more “cake-like”. That being said, if you intend on making a Kransekage tower like I did for our 25th wedding anniversary, I would not used this recipe because it does not hold its shape as nicely as the other recipe.

Pipe marcipan out with a large plain round tip and shape into triangle.

The original directions asked you to pipe it out using a triangular tip, which I don’t have. So I used a large round plain tip (#809) instead and shaped the marcipan into it’s classic triangular shape with my wet fingers. When you do this, careful not to use too much water on your fingers and keep rinsing and wetting your fingers to avoid the marcipan from sticking. Also the Kransekage cookies seemed to brown faster than the other Kranskage recipe so keep a very close eye on them (lower your oven temperature by 10-20 degrees, if needed). And finally, the original recipe called for Odense Bagemarcipan which I am not able to get here in the US so I used my regular Odense Original 60 % almonds (used to be called Ren Rå marcipan). These cookies are really wonderful and I hope you enjoy them. 🙂

Best Kransekager

Kransekage (makes 15 pieces)

Ingredients:

For Cakes:

250 gram Odense Original marcipan (used to be called Ren Rå)

125 gram sugar

55 gram pasteurized egg whites

For Glaze:

40 gram confectioners sugar (sifted),( plus more if needed)(1.4 oz)

15 gram pasteurized egg whites(0.5 oz)

For the chocolate:

55 gram bittersweet chocolate

Directions:

Double up two large baking sheets for extra insulation to avoid burning the bottom of cakes. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 390 degrees F (200 degrees C).

For the cakes: Pour egg whites into a small dish and add sugar, stir and let sit for 30 to 60 minutes. Using your stand-mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cut the marcipan into smaller pieces and add egg whites/sugar mixture, beat until you have a completely smooth mass without any lumps (5+ minutes). Scrape dough into a pastry bag fitted with a large plain round tip and pipe out logs onto baking sheet that are finger length (about 8 cm/3 inches). Wet your fingers with a little water and gently press each log into a rounded triangle, continue to wet fingers as needed but careful not to get marcipan too wet. Bake for 14 to 18 minutes or until golden.  Allow to cool completely.

For the glaze: Beat together confectioners sugar and pasteurized egg whites on high-speed for at least 5 minutes. The glaze should be pretty thick and no longer flow together when beaters are stopped, add more sifted confectioners sugar if needed. Load glaze into a plastic bag and snip off tip to create a very tiny opening. Begin decorating, moving the tip back and forth across the logs making sure to extend the tip out over the edge to allow the glaze to droop down the outside in a loop style fashion. Allow glaze to dry completely before dipping ends into chocolate.

For the chocolate: Chop chocolate into small pieces and melt over a water-bath of gently simmering water. Dip each end of Kransekager into melted chocolate and place on baking sheet. Allow chocolate to set (to speed up this process place Kransekager in refrigerator for 10 minutes, take out and bring back to room temperature. Store Kransekager in an airtight container. Enjoy!

Source: Odense