Christmas is coming, so let’s start baking!!

Today I want to present you a biscuit recipe that my mum use to prepare for Christmas every year: ovis molis. I’m not sure if this exists anywhere else in the world nor if it’s well known in other parts of Italy, but in my house they’re always ready few days before Christmas so this year, since I’m home, I’ve tried them myself.

Basically, they are tea biscuits made with hard boiled egg yolks, instead of the usual eggs mixed up with every other ingredient.

Here’s how you do them:

Ingredients:

• 200 gr of flour
• 120 gr of butter
• 80 gr of caster sugar
• 3 hard boiled egg yolks
• lemon zest
• small pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

How to do it:

The first thing to do is hard boil the egg yolks. If you want to make it easy, simple hard boil the 3 eggs and then separate them afterwards, but if you want to  keep the egg white for some other recipe (for example, some great Xmas meringue 🙂 ) then you can boil the water, and when it’s boiling you separate the yolks from the whites and you put them in the water one by one. As simple as that! Leave them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then you can take them out and let them cool.

When they are completely cooled off, peel the egg white from the outside (a very thin layer) and then, using a fork, break them until they become like small breadcrumbs.

In a bowl, mix the flour with salt and sugar, then mix it with the butter (that you’ve kept outside the fridge for about 30 minutes) using your hands. Add vanilla extract and lemon zest and the egg yolks, and create a ball with your dough.

Put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to rest.

After 30 minutes, take the dough from the fridge and start making small spheres, as big as walnuts, and place them on ungreased baking sheets, then gently push with your finger the center of the sphere to create a cavity. Put in the cavity your favourite jam, nutella or peanut butter and place it in pre-heated oven at 170 degrees (Celsius) for 10-12 minutes, and there you go!!

The shape of mine is not that great, but the taste was!

I’ve also tried a version with chocolate, but I still have to figure out the right proportion of the ingredients so I’ll post it next time!!