Hungarian Butter Horns

« Triangles of rich dough filled with an airy, nutty meringue. Hungarian butter horns are delicious, lightly sweet and nutty cookies. »

I didn't really do much of anything exciting over Christmas out in what is now suburban wasteland that once was mostly farmland when I was young, but I did bake a few things since it beat confronting the full extent of the SUV nation and it wouldn't be Christmas without plates of cookies. My mother wanted to make the toxic 'peanut butter balls' (creamy peanut butter, confectioner's sugar and crisp rice formed into balled then covered in sweet milk chocolate) that everyone but me seems to love so I thought I'd make something to offset the sugar payload.

Mom had the recipe for a cookie that one of the neighbours, a retired librarian, would always bring to block parties where I would snatch more than was perhaps polite from the plate. I'd even send other kids over to get me a few more when I knew I had been busted on taking more than my share. :) God, remember block parties? These days Mrs. Anderson, the hostess for our annual block party, would die at the thought of having 50 people and their kids over to swim in her pool and party until the wee hours with altogether too much food and drink due to liability with the pool and, well, the world is no longer the nice place it used to be where you could do such things with casual affection. At least the cookie recipe remains.

Mrs. Daniel, the retired librarian, had the coolest gadget in her kitchen; a double-door convection oven. Even as a kid I thought it was fun to watch the cookies bake and puff up almost like magic. I still like to stare in the window and watch things bake as I'm easily entertained. I tried to track down the provenance of this recipe since it is very likely not hungarian. In the two cookbooks I found the recipe in, one told a story about a dying grandmother dictating the recipe from her deathbed for posterity which was highly dubious in spite of the touching personal detail. The other cookbook was the 1950s edition of Betty Crocker's classic red cookbook. The classic recipe could very possibly be related to a hungarian pastry called kifli as the dough and the filling are very similar.

I tried a couple different variations to see if I could improve on the cookie since, while tasty, they aren't the most beautiful cookies on the plate as the meringue puffs up and spreads out of the cookie and then deflates a bit when it has cooled. I tried piping a bit onto each wedge and then rolling the dough up which did keep the meringue from spreading but it didn't taste as good without it being spread between all the layers of dough. I tried both with and without an eggwash and, again, the original recipe without the wash looked better. I dissolved the yeast in a small amount of water before kneading it in and, well, it didn't seem to make a difference at all. Of the three nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans, that I tried I found the hazelnuts were the best with the sour dough and the sweet meringue.

One thing that does make a noticeable difference in the cookies is how cold the dough is when you work it and subsequently pop it in the oven. Don't start to work with the dough until it's firm and if you have a tray of cookies ready to go into the oven but have to go do something for a few minutes, put them into the fridge. Keep it cold and keep it moving. It makes a lot of cookies with very few ingredients.

Hungarian Butter Horns

Makes: about 64 cookies
Time: about 90 minutes
Source: Mrs. Daniels, retired librarian, who used to live down the street from my parents.

Dough:

• 1 cake (17g) fresh yeast
• 4 cups or 9,5 dl sifted flour
• 2 1/2 sticks or 283g butter, cold and cut into small pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 egg yolks, well beaten
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:

• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl finely chopped nuts
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the dough: Sift flour with salt. Add crumbled yeast and mix well. Cut in butter. Add beaten yolks, sour cream and vanilla. Mix until blended, use hands if necessary. Wrap in baking paper and chill until filling is ready.

For the filling: Whip egg whites, vanilla, cinnamon and sugar to soft, firm peaks. Fold in nuts and cinnamon.

Brush pastry board with a 50-50 mixture of powdered and granulated sugars. Divide dough into 8 parts. Chill unused dough. Roll each part into a 9-inch/23cm circle, an easy trick to trim the dough is to use an inverted pie pan over the dough and use the pastry wheel to cut around it. Spread dough with a thin layer of filling, leaving a small border around the edge and a small circle in the center empty, and cut circle into 8 pie shaped wedges using a pizza cutter or pastry wheel. Roll wide edge of each wedge toward center and place rolled cookie on baking sheet lined with baking paper.

Bake in preheated 400F/205C oven for about 7 minutes if using convection or 15-18 minutes in a conventional oven. Cool on rack and dust with confectioners' sugar or cinnamon sugar. You can also decorate with simple confectioners' sugar frosting if you want to add more sweetness.