"Ochsenaugen" (Oxen eyes!)

Oh I wish I could see my non-German readers' face when they read the title of my new cooking post! What will they think I got on our plates?

Well, everybody can be reassured, it is nothing dodgy, no real Oxen eyes, just biscuits which are so weirdly named in German :)

Being quite a fan of that biscuit I decided to get on making some myself rather than always buy them at the bakery. The idea was also to master the recipe before going to France and surprise my father with it, as he is a big fan of marzipan. I used the recipe from Dr. Oetker (baking brand) and I am not quite happy with it. Still giving it to you, writing what I thought went wrong and what I will try to correct next time:

For about 40 biscuits [I only managed a maximum of 30]

Biscuit dough:

- 200 gr flour

- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder [I misread and used half a tablespoon, not sure it mattered] 

- 50 gr sugar

- 1 sachet vanilla sugar

- lemon zest [the recipe says a sachet, I didn't use any as I prefer to use freshly grated lemon but did not have one at hand]

- a pinch of salt [I am proud to say that for once I did not forget it!]

- 125 gr soft butter or magarine

- 3 yolks (medium sized eggs)

[I found the dough very crumbly, uneasy to roll out and to use. Next time I would probably use my mother's recipe for plain biscuits. The idea of a touch of lemon is quite nice though.]

 

Coating cream:

- 300 gr plain cooking marzipan

- 3 egg whites

- 1 sachet of vanilla sugar [I would probably use two next time]

[The cream was far too liquid and did not get into shape. After baking it remained very soft. Without being horrible, it was not as expected and therefore disappointing. What I would do different? 2 eggs for 300 gr, if still too liquid adding another 50 or 100 gr of marzipan.] 

Other ingredients:

100 gr red jam (strawberry, raspberry...)

100 gr yellow jam (apricot, peach...)

100 gr green jam (kiwi...)

[I ended up with 10 biscuits less than what the recipe said AND the coating remained rather flat, so i only needed in total about 50 gr (tops!) of jam... I guess for that specific point, one just needs to adjust on the spot.]

1 - Preheat the oven - 180°C/200°C depending on the function you use. Cover the baking tray with baking paper.

2 - Mix all the ingredients for the dough (with machine) until you get an homogeneous dough. Roll it out on a flat, clean and floured area (30x30cm) and cut circle of about 5 cm diameter. [I used a flower shaped dough-cutter]. Put the circles on the baking tray. Do it again and again until you have used all the dough.

3 - Cut the marzipan in small pieces and put them in a bowl, add the whites and vanilla sugar. Mix everything with a mixer to obtain a sort of homogeneous cream.

 

Pour it in a pastry bag with a star-shaped end-bit of about 8 mm diameter [how is that even called in proper English? The star-shape did not work out well. Mine was too small and the cream was too liquid to retain any sort of shape anyway.]. Make a circle of cream on top of every dough piece.

4 - Bake for about 13 min [always to be adjusted according to the oven being used]

5 - Put the biscuits on a grid to cool down.

6 - Put the jam through a strainer over a sauce pan. Bring it to the boil for some minutes. 

Then place some of the hot jam in the middle of the biscuits and leave it to cool down. 

Enjoy!