🇬🇧 Desserts: Shekerbura (Azerbaijan)

Today we will discover the taste of a typical Azerbaijani dessert. Its name is Shekerbura.

Tasting dishes from different places and cultures is a way to broaden our repertoire and develop more creative habits. Follow my social media profiles and include this site in your favourite feed reader to access all the style and lifestyle content for those who make the world their home that I share on these channels. As some content requires a lot of research, translations from languages ​​I don't know, etc., I don't publish every day.

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Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 1 kg of first quality soft wheat flour (white only) + 1 tbsp
• 400 g unsalted butter, cut into large pieces
• 5 egg yolks
• 250 g of sour cream
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla powder (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 125 ml of hot milk

 

For the stuffing:

• 700 g of hazelnuts, almonds or walnuts, without peel.
• 700 g of granulated sugar
• 2 tsp, or to taste, ground cardamom

Directions:

1. Prepare the dough. Put the flour and butter in a large bowl. With your hands, rub them together until you get fine crumbs. Make sure there are no large crumbs left.
2. In a small bowl, using a spoon, whisk together the egg yolks, cream, salt and vanilla powder.
3. In another small bowl put the yeast, 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 tablespoon of sugar. Fill it with 1/4 cup of warm milk. Leave to rest for about 2 minutes.
4. Add the egg mixture with sour cream and the yeast mixture to the flour and butter mixture.
5. Knead the ingredients with your hands until they are completely incorporated and you will get a rough and inconsistent dough. Transfer the dough to the work surface. Put the remaining 1/4 cup of warm milk in a separate bowl. Always wetting your hands with milk, knead the dough for a few minutes to make it smooth.
6. Form the dough into a ball. Put it back in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 30 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, prepare the filling. If you are using peeled walnuts, chop them finely in a food processor. In a bowl, mix the chopped walnuts with the sugar. Add the ground cardamom and vanilla powder. Mix until completely absorbed.
8. Divide the dough into 36 balls, each weighing 50g.
9. Work with one ball at a time and cover the others. Roll each ball into a 10cm circle.
10. Place the circle in the palm of your hand, slightly bent, and put 2 tablespoons of filling in the centre.
11. Starting at one end, start sealing the left and right edges towards the centre to get a crescent shape. The sealed Shekerbura should be a little plump from the filling and never flat.
12. Using your thumb and forefinger, start squeezing and twisting the dough along the mold to decorate the edges.
13. Roll out the dough on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Continue to work with the rest of the dough balls, arranging them on the pan while you finish decorating the edges.
14. Now decorate the tops. Holding a dough in one hand and a maggash (tweezers) in the other, squeeze the dough with the angled maggash and lift it up slightly. Continue until you get a row of the pattern. Create similar rows, each at an angle to the other, until the entire surface is decorated.
15. If the maggash is not available, leave the candies unmarked.
16. Bake on the centre rack of an oven preheated to 175 ° C for 15-20 minutes, or until the edges start to change colour and the bottom turns light brown. Be careful not to overcook the candies - their tops should be light in colour when cooked. If you haven't decorated your candies with tongs, coat them with powdered sugar once they have cooled.

Nycka, the Nomad