Easter butter cookies with saffron and chocolate

The blog event called "Tea Time Treats", which is a monthly baking challenge event managed  Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked. It is Kate from What Kate Baked, which is the host of April month. The theme for this month is off cause Easter whatkatebaked.blogspot.com - tea-time-treats blogging challenge, which has been something of a challenge for me being Danish.

Off cause we celebrate Easter here in Denmark !!!! We actually have an Easter vacation of 5 days incl the week-end. But a traditional Danish way of celebrating Easter is having focus on lunch tables with marinated herrings, egg dishes and the usual aquavit. And for the sweet part we are eating Easter Eggs of chocolate or marzipan combined with chocolate.

So I turned my search for baked goods for the Tea Time Treat to various recipes from Odense Marcipan. And here I found this recipe on paaskesmaakager med safran og chokolade (Easter butter cookies with saffron and chocolate.

I have made no modifications at all to this recipe. Easter for me is a wonderful celebration of re-birth of life, as spring is so full of life in form of more day-light, singing birds and flowers popping up in nature, I decided to use flower cutter such as this Marimekko flower cutter for cookies for the shape of these Easter butter cookies. And while I was cutting out the butter cookies, my mind found that using flower shape related very well to flower food, as saffron is coming from crocus :-)

These Easter butter cookies are having a delicate flavour of saffron. I am having some difficulties in tasting the lemon peel. A modification to these Easter butter cookies could be only to saffron, so no addition of lemon peel and milk chocolate, I think such cookies would taste great of saffron. I also find the sweet level to be just right.


Easter butter cookies with saffron and chocolate a la Odense Marcipan:

• 1 point of knife of saffron
• 20 g icing sugar
• 150 g (cake) flour
• 75 g marzipan - grated
• 50 g of milk chocolate - chopped
• 125 g butter - chopped into small pieces
• peel of ½ lemon - use organic
• 1 egg yolk

1. Heat the oven to 200'C (conventional oven).
2. Grind the saffron and icing sugar together.
3. Add the flour, marzipan, lemon peel to the icing sugar.
4. Grind the butter pieces into the flour.
5. Add the chopped chocolate.
6. Use the egg yolk to mix the butter cookie dough together.
7. Place the dough on baking paper and roll it into a height of 3-4 mm. Use flour both below and on top of the dough, so it is not sticking to much.
8. Cut the dough into cookies.
9. Place the cookies on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
10. Bake the butter cookies in the top of the oven for 8 minutes.
11. Cold down the butter cookies, before they are stored in tins.
12. Happy after Easter :-)