Berliner Mandelbrot - Almond Bread

[Olham 164]

Yesterday, I made "Berliner Mandelbrot" - my absolute favourite Christmas bake. Here's the recepy.

I only have it in Gramm weight, but you can easily google for a website to change it to your local weight.

 

4 eggs

400 g ground almonds

400 g brown sugar

300 g wheat flour

40 g cacao

1 good soup spoon of cinnamon

half a teaspoon ground cloves

half a teaspoon cardamom

a flat teaspoon of baking powder

a little salt

 

Heat the backing oven to 200° Celsuis.

And now for all rotary fans especially - equip your rotary stirrer with the kneader tools.

Stirr the eggs with the sugar; then add the ground almonds, cacao, cinnamon, salt and spices

and stirr again. Now add the flour bit for bit, and the backing powder, while kneading the pastry.

It will become pretty tough - you may add a little hot water, but only so much, that your kneader

won't collapse.

Now smear a little butter on a baking tray, especially into the corners, so the cake will come off

better, when it's ready. Then pour the pastry onto the tray, and flatten it equally thick over the whole

tray. That may be easiest by putting your hands into a bowl of warm water and then flatten it by

hands. When the pastry begins to stick on your hands, put them into the water again.

 

Now you put the baking tray into the heated oven and bake it for 20 minutes.

It will still be soft enough to cut it into the right sized peaces after baking it; then let it cool out.

You may need a pan scraper to get it from the tray later, without having half of the almond bread

sticking to the tray.

I hope you will find it as delicious as I do - enjoy!

Edited December 4, 2010 by Olham

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

OK, now I'm hungry.

 

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[Slartibartfast 153]

I will admit I have raided 7 Christmas markets in Vienna today to try out the Gluhwein etc... and was it so worth it... 7 hours of wandering round Vienna... now if anyone wants me I am in the Mess experimenting... :drinks:

[Olham 164]

Pilots are hard to kill - 7 markets with (at least!) seven Glühwein - and you still can walk?

[Slartibartfast 153]

Pilots are hard to kill - 7 markets with (at least!) seven Glühwein - and you still can walk?

 

Well I am an ex-military ex-rugby playing Rugby Bar manager so plenty of training...

[Olham 164]

That explains it perfectly well.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

It's all about conditioning and getting in shape for the task at hand.

 

.

[TaillyHo 2]

Never mind walking, Olham - the guy can sit at a computer and type out an error-free and coherent message! Respect!

 

Nice-sounding recipe, BTW.

Edited December 7, 2010 by TaillyHo

[Slartibartfast 153]

Now all I have to do is perfect this Tequila Gluhwein I am working on... plenty of testing needs to be ready next week... :drinks: :drinks:

[TaillyHo 2]

Ah, how you suffer for your 'art', Slarti!

 

btw, any pearls of wisdom you'd care to pass on to a tyre-kicking would-be Strutter pilot? I like the look of RNAS-3 in terms of sustaining morale and having the 'Pup as a next-in-line. By comparison RNAS-4 seem to spend quite a while in the single-seat Strutter (which seems a poor-realtion by having no rear-gunner, nor the speed or agility of the Pup!?!). Also, I presume these 'fighter' squads give more variety than signing on with a 'bomber' squadron (Brit or French). Any tips would be great, cheers!

[Slartibartfast 153]

Ah, how you suffer for your 'art', Slarti!

 

btw, any pearls of wisdom you'd care to pass on to a tyre-kicking would-be Strutter pilot? I like the look of RNAS-3 in terms of sustaining morale and having the 'Pup as a next-in-line. By comparison RNAS-4 seem to spend quite a while in the single-seat Strutter (which seems a poor-realtion by having no rear-gunner, nor the speed or agility of the Pup!?!). Also, I presume these 'fighter' squads give more variety than signing on with a 'bomber' squadron (Brit or French). Any tips would be great, cheers!

 

Suffering for my art is wonderful... with regard to the Sopwith Strutter I will put together a PM for you and send it over later today... tis a wonderful old girl provided you treat her right...

[DukeIronHand 8]

As a self titled and proclaimed "master bread baker" just seeking clarification on:

 

"40 g cacao"

[Slartibartfast 153]

As a self titled and proclaimed "master bread baker" just seeking clarification on:

 

"40 g cacao"

 

That would be 40grams of Cocoa...

[DukeIronHand 8]

That would be 40grams of Cocoa...

 

Thanks - I figured but somehow had a notion that "cacao" was the name of a commercial product - or is that German for cocoa hence why I see it on packages? The German half of my family would be appalled by my lack of knowledge.

[Olham 164]

In Germany we say: Kakao. In the English dictionary I found "cacao (botan.)" and thought that was it.

But now I see, you say "Cocoa", which I had always thought it would mean our "Kokos", which is the

edable part of the coco nut. Confusion accomplished?

[von Baur 54]

I mentioned this recipe to Frau von Baur and she wants to give it a go. I can convert grams to ounces of weight, but the brown sugar and the flour are usually measured by volume. Any chance of getting those conversions, Olham?

[Olham 164]

Hmmm - I made a test and found that 100 g sugar is a cup of sugar.

A "normal" coffee cup that is - not a mug!

For the flour, I didn't want to pour it on my scale, cause I can't get it back into the bag

without covering half the kitchen in white powder.

You should just get more or less 3/4 of the amount of almond - optically.

[NS13Jarhead 6]

Herr Olham,

 

I may give this a try this weekend. I have a gram scale and have converted the temperature (392 F). What are the dimensions of the baking tray you mentioned? I am guessing it is what we call here a "half sheet pan" 18x12 inches (about 45 cm x 30 cm) and 1 inch (5 cm) deep.

 

Danke!

[Olham 164]

My baking tray is 35 x 40 cm, and 3 cm deep.

The cake doesn't rise much - it won't be much more than 1,5 cm thick in the end.

If you want it to rise more, you may well use a good teaspoon of baking powder.

 

The pastry will be pretty tough - when it's flattened out, it may be ca. 1 cm thick, not much more.

I wish you all good success!

[Olham 164]

Here is a picture of what I had left from the second tray I baked. It never lasts long.

This time, I used backing paper underneath - makes it easier to get it off the tray.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2010 by Olham

[NS13Jarhead 6]

Herr Olham,

 

The bread is wonderful. It DOES make your kitchen smell like Christmas! And you were not kidding about the dough being thick and sticky - I almost couldn't flatten it into the pan. I cut mine into bite sized pieces (pizza cutter works great for this). My kids love it. The only drawback is the cost of the cardamom. Luckily, I've got enough in the jar for many more of these. I believe that you've introduced me to a new holiday tradition.

 

[Olham 164]

It looks great, Jarhead - much better than my own first attempt!

I can almost smell it from the picture.

And now it is definitely a Christmas tradition - the kids will never let you out of this again!

Glad you like it!

[von Baur 54]

Then we're talking 4 cups of brown sugar? Seems a bit much, but I'm no baker. Is that about what you used, Jarhead? And what other English measurements can you let us in on? How many cups of flour?

 

 

O darn! I lost my metric-to-English time conversion chart. How many English minutes in a metric minute?

[NS13Jarhead 6]

O darn! I lost my metric-to-English time conversion chart. How many English minutes in a metric minute?

 

I believe it's seven and a half hogsheads to a quarter farthing during the vernal equinox, but that's just an estimate.

 

I have a dieter's scale (like that helps with THIS recipe) that does ounces and grams, so I went by weight rather than volume.

 

This is what I came up with on the ingredient measurements.

 

4 eggs

400 g (14 oz) ground almonds

400 g (14 oz) brown sugar

300 g (10.5 oz) wheat flour

40 g (1.4 oz) cocoa

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon cardamom

1 level teaspoon of baking powder

pinch of salt

 

Heat the oven to 200° Celsius (394° F)

All the rest is the same.

 

It's nice and soft when warm, but it firms up almost like a biscotti when completely cooled down. Very nice with coffee or heavily spiked egg nog.

 

 

[Olham 164]

Thanks for "translating it" into your weights, Jarhead.

As this is a cake that doesn't come up very much, you can vary the parts a bit, von Baur.

If you want to use only 10 oz of sugar, that's okay.

Also can the spices be varied in amount. I used even more cinnamon and clove last time,

which was okay for the cinnamon, but too much clove - for my personal taste.

If you bake it and like it, you may do so more often and find yourself experimenting with it -

it's not "chiseled in stone", as our UncleAl keeps saying.