Nero

Hi Dears,

Today, I brought You little, sweet sandvich-looking darlings, that you can find in all of the traditional confectioneries in Hungary. 

When I was a trainee in one of them, for almost half a year, I filled thousands of these with jam. The fun part (which I think is the fun part) is to create the shells with the decorating bag, was always the professional's job, as that was the part where the neros could go wrong. Each and every neros should be the same size to look beautiful in a plate.

The other big challenge while baking it, is actually the baking time. One second you see them unbaked, in the next second they are burned. 

If you ask any confectioners which product burns the most, they would answer the neros.  

However, the customers love them, and so do we.

Why? After you fill them with jam, give them 2-3 hours (in the confectioneries they even give them 2-3 days to let them soften) and you will have the softest, and the tastiest  little sweet sandwiches of the World. 

I don't really know why we have the 'Macaron craziness' everywhere, when we have a much more delicious sweet, yes if you like the colors, you can color this sponge, too. And yes you can use any kind of filling for this sweet, too, like ganache, cream, etc..

So, Neros I am cheering for You, to win over Macarons!!!

Ingredients:

• 210 g of flour
• 175 g of butter (or margarine)
• 120 g of powdered sugar
• 7 egg yolks
• 1 tbsp of vanilla sugar
• apricot jam
• melted dark chocolate for the decoration on the top

Preparation:

1. Melt the butter a bit, then start to whisk it with the powdered sugar, and the vanilla sugar until fluffy.

2. 1 by 1 add the egg yolks, while still whisking it.

3. Sift in the flour and mix the mixture. 

4. Put it in a decorating bag, and create little hemispheres, try to stick to one size. I used baking paper.

5. Preheat the oven to 180 degree C, and bake the nero shells for 10-12 minutes, but you should keep an eye on them. When the bottom of the shells get brown you overbaked them (like I did, too in the first tray of them) They are OK as well, but not perfect. :)

6. Fill them with apricot jam, and sandwich them together.

7. Melt some dark chocolate, make a little decorating bag (with baking paper, or with plastic bag) cut the end to get a little hole, and decorate the top of the neros with chocolate lines. /The other decoration would be to dip the half of the sandwiches into the chocolate/ 

Leave them for some hours to let them soften, then you can serve them. 

Enjoy! :)

xoxo: Hajni