Dattelkonfekt The Baking Bible
Monday, May 11, 2015 at 11:59AM 
dattlelkonfekt
Dattelkonfekt: a German date and almond meringue confectionary (cookie)
Super excited that I will be joining the fabulous existing Rose's Alpha Bakers to bake the recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Baking Bible'.
Rose Levy Beranbaum is the queen of cakes and an award-winning American baker, cookbook author and blogger. It's going to be fun :)
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How it works; Once a week I will post about what I have baked, this won't include the recipe due to copyright however I will be posting how it went and photos of making/baking the gorgeous baked goods.
This won't affect the usual blog stories and there will be plenty of cupcakes, chocolate and sugar still to come.
Today is my first entry 'Dattelkonfekt'... ummm, can't pronounce that at all...and I'm sugar rushing from too many morning dattlelkonfekt but here goes ....
I needed dates and the supermarket had fresh, Californian fancy eating and a few brands of dried "cooking" dates. I went with Trident a Turkish grown date that is fairly "dry" as I thought this wouldn't add too much moisture to the meringue.
I started with processing almonds, dates and then it was time to make the meringue.
Rose's books are meticulously detailed to assist perfect baking, for example egg whites could be measured by "3 egg whites" or in imperial or metric weights. I went with metric.
Interesting meringue method as it isn't taken to stiff peaks, after the dates and almonds were mixed into the meringue I filled a disposable pastry bag a third full and snipped the bottom ready to begin piping. I didn't use an icing/pastry tip as the mixture felt thick enough to pipe without one. 
There was the option to pipe the meringues onto oblaten a thin edible wheat based wafer that you may have come across before on the base of your Christmas Dutch and German cookies. I could only find multi coloured ones and I thought the cookies would look odd with bright pink and green, so I went with option two of baking on non stick paper lined trays.
They don't take long to bake and cool, what you end up with is a meringue "cookie" that has a crisp meringue exterior with a moist slight chewy interior... plus the crunch of nuts.
My step son Daniel and I thought they would be on the cloying side of sweet, with sugar and dates but they are not. When Dan ate his second one he was nodding in the universal "yep, these are good" way. I thought they were nice, perhaps a still a little sweet for me.
Would I bake again: Yes
Would I make any changes: Yes, I'd add ground cardamom to pair with coffee after Indian food, Turkish food etc. Maybe for Christmas track down those oblaten bases and add orange zest along with ground coriander seeds.
That's it post one for Rose's Alpha Bakers done. Haven't been to Rose's site? Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum.
Happy Baking :)
Feel like making sugar springs?