I’m dedicating this week’s post to Open Kitchens. Open Kitchens is a project set up to provide free meals to those in need by partnering with restaurants across the UK to deliver food to the elderly, vulnerable and frontline workers. A donation of £5.55 enables Open Kitchens to supply 3 meals.
What are Breskvice?
Breskvice is actually the Croatian word for peaches. But here, breskvice are peach-shaped sandwich cookies popular in Croatia and Serbia. Whereas a real peach has a pit in the center, these cookies are filled with peach jam spiked with a splash of rum.
Breskvice take a bit of time to assemble, and as such are normally saved for special occasions like Christmas, Easter and weddings. But I think they can also find their place in a summer dinner party: emblematic of summer’s bounty, easy to share and difficult to resist.
How to Make Breskvice Cookies
The cookie dough is simple to prepare. Simply sift together the dry ingredients, whisk together the wet ingredients, and then fold the dry into the wet to form a dough. I find it easier to portion the dough after it’s chilled for a couple hours. When baking, the cookies should brown on the bottom, but not much on the tops. This makes it easier for the color to show later.
After the baked cookies have cooled, they’re hollowed out with a paring knife to make room for the filling. The crumbs from hollowing out the cookies are used to thicken and add some texture to the jam and rum filling.
The filling can be piped or spooned into each cookie and then they’re sandwiched together, giving them the characteristic peach shape. Then they’re dyed with yellow and red food coloring and covered in sugar, making them look a lot like fuzzy peaches.
Ingredients:
Yields about 60 cookies.
Cookie Dough:
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
160ml vegetable oil (150g)
135g granulated sugar
15ml whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Filling:
250g peach, apricot, or plum jam
2 Tablespoons rum
3/4 cup peach, apricot, or plum jam
2 Tablespoons rum
For Decorating:
Red and yellow food coloring
Granulated sugar, for coating
Breskvice Cookies
Sift together the dry ingredients:
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Combine the wet ingredients:
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, sugar, milk and vanilla extract to combine well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet:
Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until the dough comes together into a homogenous mixture.
Chill the dough:
Cover the bowl with plastic and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Preheat the oven:
Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
Portion the dough:
Working in batches, divide the dough into teaspoon sized portions and roll into a ball with the palms of your hands. Place the cookies about 5cm (2in) apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake the cookies:
Bake the cookies at 175°C (350°F) for 12 to 15 minutes. You don’t want the cookies to brown much on the tops, but they should be golden on the bottom.
Cool the cookies:
Let the cookies cool to room temperature before starting on the filling.
Breskvice Filling
Hollow out the cookies:
Using a paring knife, carefully hollow out the cookies. Save the crumbs for the filling.
Make the filling:
In a small bowl, combine the jam, rum and the crumbs from the cookies (about 140g). The texture should be thick enough that it will hold the cookies together, but thin enough to use a piping bag.
Fill the cookies:
Using a piping bag or a couple of tea spoons, fill each hollowed out cookie with a rounded dollop of the jam filling.
Assemble the Breskvice
Sandwich the cookies:
Sandwich pairs of cookies together. The filling should hold them together.
Color the cookies:
Lay a couple layers of paper towel down on a tray or a cooling rack.
Fill two small bowls partway with water. In one of the bowls add a few drops of yellow food coloring and in the other a few drops of red food dye. You can use a couple cookies to test the amount of dye needed to get the right color.
Roll the cookies in the yellow food dye along the seams of the sandwich. Then dip the tops of each cookie in the red food coloring and set on the paper towel. Work quickly so the cookies don’t absorb too much moisture.
Let the cookies dry on the paper towel for a while before moving on to the next stop or the sugar will clump.
Coat the cookies in sugar:
Fill a small bowl with granulated sugar. Roll each cookie in the sugar to coat them evenly.
After baking, is the cookie supposed to be hard or soft before filling?
Do these need refrigerated?
Hi Deb! They will be crisp before filling, but after filling and decorating them, they’ll soften. They can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for a couple of days or in the refrigerator if you prefer.