These pastries come from my mother and were baked all year round for Easter or special occasions such as birthday parties. Anyone who has never tried puff pastry will love this simple puff pastry recipe. The highlight is the filling made of marzipan and apricot jam. If you like it a bit more extravagant, add a little apricot liqueur to the filling.
For the dough:
250 grams of wheat flour
3 level teaspoons cream of tartar baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
250 grams of well-squeezed quark or layered cheese
200–250 grams of butter
For the filling:
50 grams of raw marzipan
2 tablespoons apricot jam
1 tablespoon apricot liqueur, if needed
2 tablespoons blanched almonds, ground
1-2 egg yolks, beaten together, for brushing
For the glaze:
50 grams of powdered sugar
1 tablespoon of water
1. Mix the flour with the cream of tartar and sift directly onto a baking board.
2. Make a well in the centre of the flour.
3. Add the quark or layered cheese passed through a sieve and the cold butter cut into pieces.
4. Quickly knead all the ingredients into a dough.
5. Roll out the dough about 1/2 centimetre thick, fold over several times and roll out again.
6. Repeat this process two more times.
7. Wrap the dough in greaseproof paper and let it rest overnight.
8. Now roll out the dough again to a thickness of 1/2 centimetre and cut out squares of the same size with a knife or roll out a pastry wheel.
9. Cut windmills or serrated pockets out of the squares.
10. Mix the raw marzipan mixture with the jam, the liqueur and the almonds.
11. Put a teaspoon of the marzipan-apricot mixture in the middle of each 12x12 centimetre square.
12. For the windmills, cut about 4 centimetres deep from the corners to the middle.
13. Fold in half of the cut corners towards the centre to create the windmill blades.
14. For the serrated pockets, put a strip of marzipan filling in the middle, brush one half of the filled squares with egg yolk and fold the other half on top, make comb-like slits in the pieces with a knife or pastry wheel and pull them apart slightly.
15. Brush all the pieces with the beaten egg yolk.
16. Place the windmill blades and comb-like pieces on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 200-220°C on the middle shelf for 10-15 minutes until golden.
17. Brush the particles with the powdered sugar glaze made from powdered sugar and water.