Cardamom Napolitaine
Buttery and utterly addictive Mauritian sandwich cookies made of a cardamom shortbread with jam filling and a rose flavoured icing.
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.