Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Have I persuaded you to make June’s Vanilla Kifli yet?

If not, please let me try again, because these little treats are melt-in-the-mouth delicious.  Granted, the word kifli means crescent, so making them star-shaped is somewhat unconventional.  But they appeal to the littlies, so we now make “star and moon” vanilla kifli.  The ones above are part of a batch I made for Mother’s Day (my mum likes stars as well!).

I’ve now made this recipe numerous times and have a couple of tips to add to my original post.  Firstly, if possible, go by weight rather than cup measurements when you’re putting the ingredients together.  Doing so will ensure a consistently moist dough – a cup of flour can vary enormously depending on everything from ambient humidity to your hormonal state, so if you have scales, this is a good time to pull them out and use them.

Secondly, don’t spread the mix too thinly – Pete measured the dough this morning and declared the perfect thickness to be 1.5cm (⁵/₈ “).  I usually roll or press out half the dough at a time, onto a sheet of parchment paper.

Thirdly, substitute ground unblanched almonds for a small portion of the almond meal.  This batch had 50g  ground almonds to 200g almond meal.  The recipe will work perfectly well with straight almond meal, but the unblanched almonds add interesting texture and colour.

Finally, don’t overbake.  I set my oven to 160C (fan) and bake for no more than 18 minutes, and sometimes even that’s too much.  I do, however, have a hot and occasionally temperamental oven, so you’ll need to adjust accordingly to suit your baking conditions.  As you can see from the photo below, the absolute ideal is a kifli which is light golden the whole way through, without a darkened brown bottom.  That bit takes a bit of practice, but the rest of the recipe is actually remarkably simple!

These cookies seem to improve with a little time, so make sure you hide some until the second day (hard to do in this house).  You can also shape the unbaked dough into logs and freeze them (make sure you wrap them well to prevent freezer burn).  I’ve defrosted frozen dough a month later and it’s  baked up beautifully!