Napolitaine is a Mauritian shortbread sandwich covered in a sugar glaze. The traditional napolitaine has a Chinese guava jam filling and a baby-pink coloured glaze.
As kids, napolitaine was one our favourite treats. It is not difficult to imagine how the combination of buttery cookie, sticky jam and sweet sugary shell would appeal to a child. Clearly, the napolitaine-loving-child in us is still very much alive. To this day, we go wide-eyed at the sight of the cookie. In fact, on a holiday to Durban a while back, we came across mini napolitaine: it was one of the highlights of our trip!
For Divali, a couple of years ago, we made napolitaines with an Indian twist. We added ground cardamom to the shortbread and rose water to the icing. Finally, we decorated the napolitaine with dried rose petals and pistachios. We haven’t gone back to the traditional version since!
Making napolitaine can be a labour of love but it is well worth the effort! It involves making the cookies, spreading on jam and finally pouring over a glaze. Fortunately, the steps can be staggered over a couple of days and it also makes for a fun family activity. Napolitaines will keep for a couple of weeks but they never last that long at our place!
QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE ABOUT CARDAMOM NAPOLITAINE
The recipe calls for a fair amount of icing sugar. Is that right?
Yes! The glaze needs to be thick to coat the napolitaine properly. To avoid the drippings going to waste, you can glaze the cookies in batches, on a cooling rack placed over a piece of wax/ baking paper. Collect the drippings and simply add a drop or two of water and stir to re-use.
Can I use another jam?
Sure, we also like strawberry, raspberry and apricot jam as well as kumquat preserve.
Cardamom Napolitaine
Ingredients
Napolitaine Shortbread
- 250 g all purpose/cake flour, sifted
- 165 g butter unsalted. (If you only have salted butter, skip the ¼ tsp salt.)
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- ¼ tsp salt
Filling and icing
- 60 g mixed berry jam (or other)
- 200 g icing sugar, sifted
- 2-3 drops rose water (optional)
- 2-3 tbsp boiling water
Decorations (optional)
- 10 dried rose petals broken into pieces
- 5-8 pistachios, chopped
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 180°C.
- Place the sifted flour, salt and cardamom in a mixing bowl.
- Cut the cold butter in small cubes and add to the flour bowl.
- Rub in the butter with fingertips until a fine breadcrumb texture is achieved. Alternatively, add all the cookie ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until a breadcrumb texture is obtained.
- Gather the mixture together into a ball and flatten to form a disc.
- Roll out the disc between 2 pieces of wax/baking paper until it is 5-6mm thick.
- Cut out circles which are approximately 6 cm in diameter. (You can make the circles bigger or smaller as per your preference).
- Place the circles on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for 15-18 minutes until very lightly golden.
- Allow cookies to cool completely before spreading jam on half of them. Use the remaining half to form a sandwich.
- To make the icing, mix the sifted (to break lumps) icing sugar, rose water and just enough boiling water (start with no more than 2 tbsp) until a thick, yet pourable glaze is obtained.
- Using a large spoon, pour the glaze onto the sandwich the middle of the cookies and working your way in circles to the edge. To get the sides of the sandwich coated, circle (while pouring) around the edge of a few times until it is covered in the glaze.
- Allow the excess icing to drip and let dry for around 5 minutes before adding the chopped pistachios and dried rose petal pieces. (If you add the decorations immediately, they will run to the edge of the cookie.)
- Let the icing dry completely and store cookies in an airtight container.