Lemon Curd & Lemon Gin Breskvice
Croatian Cookies with Lemon Curd and Lemon Gin Filling
This is a cookie that is almost a cakie!
It’s also a Croatian treat that is in most bakeries on most high street.
A peach of a treat to make (Groan to the really bad joke!) very easy to bake and assemble, yet looks really impressive when in a pretty pile in the middle of the table.
Traditionally with a peach/ apricot preserve with peach liquor cake crumb filling, I’ve adapted and hopefully updated it, to use freshly made lemon curd with the addition of lemon gin, not usually added to many bakes but I feel I have a duty to start a trend!
I made fresh lemon curd for these Breskvice, but using a good shop bought will work perfectly.
If you do have some lemon juice left over and 30 minutes to make your own, I’d definitely recommend you try my recipe, fresh has such an incredible buttery mouth sensation that it somehow feels indulgent.
Getting the colour on the outside of the Breskvice looks difficult but couldn’t be easier to do, just adding some food colouring to cold water is the way to get the desired peachy look.
No need to colour a lot of water, but I would recommend trying out the depth of colour on a stray piece of cookie before committing to dipping a whole one.
Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!
A pretty as a peach
What You Need
Cookie
335g Plain Flour
2tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Salt
2 Large Eggs
160ml Vegetable Oil
135g Castor Sugar
Lemon Zest from 3 Lemons
Ready for the oven
Filling
250g Lemon Curd
2 Tbs Lemon Gin
Outside
Yellow Food Colouring
Pale Pink Food Colouring
Cold Water
Pale on the top and golden on the flat bottom
How It’s Done
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together
In a bowl, mix together the oil, eggs, milk and lemon zest.
Mix everything together until what’s left is a soft dough.
Place the dough into the fridge to chill for around 1 hour
Heat the oven to 180c
Cover oven trays with non-stick baking parchment.
Once chilled, portion the dough into balls (about the size of a golf ball) and place onto the covered oven tray leaving around 2” between them
Bake in the hot oven for 12-15 minutes until they are pale brown with a deeper brown bottom – See Tip Box
Cool on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling tray to cool completely.
Once cold, use a small spoon to carefully make a hole in the flat bottom of each cookie and scoop out some of the inside into a bowl.
Place the scooped out middles into a small bowl.
Add the lemon curd and the lemon gin to the cookie crumbs and mix to form a soft paste. – See Tip Box
Fill each hole in the bottom of the cookies, with the lemon curd crumb mixture and sandwich two of them together. – See Tip Box
Place some cold tap water in two small bowls
Add a few drops of the yellow food colouring to one bowl and a few drops of the pink food colouring to the other bowl of water.
Lay out some kitchen paper on a flat surface
Roll the join of the filled cookie quickly into the yellow food colouring
Then dip the top and bottom of the cookies into the pink – See Tip Box
Once dipped, lay each of them onto the kitchen paper to drain for a few minutes
Place some granulated sugar onto a small plate
Once the cookies have been sitting for a minute, roll the cookies into the granulated sugar until they are fully covered.
Once covered in sugar, let the cookies sit for 30 minutes to air dry before eating.
Gently scoop out the middle of each cookie
A dollop of filling into each cookie hole
Not too much time in the coloured water
Tip Box
Baking – All ovens are different so be careful not to over-bake the cookies. The outside should be a very pale gold.
Filling – The filling needs to be soft enough to be able to spoon into the middle of the cookies.
Don’t Over Fill – As much as I love the filing, putting too much inside is a bit counterproductive when sticking them together. Too much inside and it oozes out when sandwiched together and that stops the food colouring adhering to the cookie evenly.
Dipping – Don’t let the cookie stay in the food colouring water for too long. Just in and out will prevent it getting ‘water logged’ and squishy.
Sugar Coating – Using granulated sugar to coat the cookies gives a shimmer that looks so pretty and a crunch that counterbalances the softness of the cookie itself.
Dipped in sugar and drying before eating
