Cocoa and citron in a heart shape for the lovers of this year’s Valentine’s Day!
ingredients for 20 pieces (total cost about 5 € with organic ingredients)
- 225 g pastry flour
- 25 g cocoa powder
- 100 g butter
- 75 g superfine sugar
- zest from 1 lemon
- 1 egg (50 g)
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) full fat milk
- 1 ½ tsp (4 g) baking powder
- 1/4 tsp (1 g) ammonia
- 1 g salt
- 200 g citron (or other citrus fruit) marmalade
- icing sugar for dusting
For days I have been wondering what to prepare to my dear husband Vangelis for Valentine’s Day.
I already know that he has developed an affection for my Sicilian style pasticiotti (coming soon). I also know that he is in love with my citron marmalade, of which I still have a couple of jars. And I finally know, that citron and cocoa are a perfect marriage.
So, I decided to make some cocoa pasticciotti, stuffed with citron marmalade in the shape of a heart … I know, “I can’t help it, I’m a romantic fool!” – by the way Eco beach is one of our favorite songs.
To make them, we begin by preparing a portion of our basic frolla dough for Italian stuffed pastries (see NOTE 1).
We sieve the flour in a large bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachement) and we add the butter cut into small dice, along with the zest. We work them until a “sandy” mixture is obtained. We add the sugar and continue mixing to fully incorporate.
We also add the egg, salt, ammonia and baking powder dissolved the very last moment in 1-2 tsp of the milk and we continue mixing, until all ingredients are well blended. Finally, we pour in the rest of the milk little by little and we continue mixing, until the dough comes together.
We transfer the dough to a floured working surface and we briefly knead with our hands, just until we obtain an homogeneous, soft and pliable dough.
When finished, we form a log, we wrap it with cling film and we let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Then we take the dough out of the fridge, we place it on a well floured working surface and we knead it for a few seconds to re-soften it.
With a rolling pin, we roll out the dough into a disk of about 3-4 mm thickness. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter of 6-7 cm diameter, we cut out hearts. We use the left overs to roll out the dough again and we cut more hearts, until we have used all of the dough. The resulted hearts should be even in number (normally if you use an 6-7 cm heart cutter, you will end up with a total of 50 hearts – what a hearty recipe!!!!).
We arrange half of the hearts on a baking tray covered with parchment paper and we pour a generous teaspoon of citron marmalade (see NOTE 2) on the center of each of them. Then we cover the stuffed hearts with the remaining ones and we press all around the filling with our thumb to seal the edges well. With a skewer, we make a hole in the middle of the top of each pasticciotto, so as to let the steam escape during cooking.
We bake the pasticciotti in a preheated oven and at 180 degrees – static function (or 160o for a ventilated oven) for about 13 minutes. They should remain soft. When ready, we remove the pasticciotti from the oven and we let them cool on a wire rack, then we generously sprinkle them with icing sugar.
If you have patience, wait for a day, before tasting them. As with all pastries containing ammonia, they get better every day.
ΝΟΤΕ 1: Find out more about our frolla dough for Italian stuffed pastries HERE
NOTE 2: If you want to make your own citron marmalade you can find out how to make a marmalade HERE
