Bilberry Mazarins
Sunday, November 26th, 2006
Mazariner are delicious Swedish mini tarts with almond paste filling. Normally they are covered with glaze, but this variant not only contains additional bilberries but also calls for a pretty cross-hatch pattern over each mazarin, omitting the traditional glaze. The crust is a normal rich short pastry which is always used for mazarins and the only new things are the bilberries and the cross-hatch pattern. I did both variants, and I really recommend skipping the pattern and just glazing each mazarin traditionally as those one tasted the best and were much quicker do do. The bilberries goes really well with the almond filling. Next time I’ll use less flour in the filling though, I thought that it was a bit too “bready”. I found the recipe in yesterday’s issue of Svenska Dagbladet and it’s originally from a cookbook by Melker Andersson and Danyel Couet. The name of the book isn’t mentioned, but I guess that the recipe is from Oas – Fredsgatan 12 . The original recipe makes 10 small tarts, but I uses smaller disposable ones which gave me 16 mazarins.
Blåbärsmazariner (Bilberry Mazarins)
(makes about 16)
dough:
3 dl flour
0.5 tsp baking powder
50 ml caster sugar
100 gram cold butter
1/2 lightly beaten egg
filling:
50 gram butter
200 gram almond paste (NB: marcipan contains more sugar and less almonds)
2 eggs
50 ml flour (next time I’ll lower the amount)
bilberry filling:
500 ml bilberries
1 tbsp caster sugar
1-2 tbsp potato flour (the larger amount if you use frozen blueberries)
glaze:
200 ml icing sugar
about 2 tsp water
Combine all ingredients for the dough quickly, adding the egg at the end. Chill for at least 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (I baked them in 175 degrees which I thought was appropriate for my hot air oven).
Use small tart pans or even smaller aluminium disposable ones. Roll out the dough, preferable between cling film as it’s rather hard to handle, and cover each pan with dough. Put the pans on a tray and let them rest in the freezer for 30 minutes.
Stir softened butter until smooth, then add finely grated almond paste and each egg separately. Stir in flour. Divide filling between tarts.
Combine sugar and potato flour. Add the (defrosted) bilberries and stir carefully. Divide the bilberries between the tarts.
Bake the mazarins on a cookie sheet in the middle part of the oven for about 15 minutes. Let cool.
Sift the sugar for the glaze, then stir in water gradually until glaze is smooth and shiny. Spread thinly on cooled mazarins.