Homemade panellets

How to make homemade panellets .

The panellets is a recipe sweet as small cakes very typical day “All Saints ” in Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands.

It is a sweet based on the classic marzipan flavored and traditionally combined with lemon and pine nuts or almonds . In our dessert recipes they could not miss, also this sweet seriously rivals the wind fritters and the bones of saint that so many foods have sweetened us in the traditional November 1.

Its origin is supposed to date from the 18th century, when it was used as a blessed food in some important religious celebrations.

Today its consumption is extended to any time of the year, although it is the “All Saints” festival when it is most important.

I leave you the recipe of those that I prepared at home, they are quite simple to make and, although the ingredients are not cheap, mainly for the almond, the result is worth it.

It is true that, as in the past, most parties are no longer celebrated, but what has become clear is that thanks to our gastronomic repertoire, it is easy to keep the party on the table with this recipe or with All Saints’ Recipes .

Preparation of the base of the panellets

1. Grind the raw almonds and add the same amount of sugar, the whites and the lemon zest.
2. First with the help of a fork and then with our hands we make a very homogeneous paste, kneading it for a few minutes.
3. With our hands we make balls the size of a pin pon ball, about 20 grams each.
4. We coat half the balls in whole pine nuts and the other half in the almonds in granules.
5. We will not have problems in sticking to the balls.
6. If we see that the pasta is very dry and that the pine nuts or almonds do not stick to us, we paint each ball with egg white before coating.
7. We place each panellet on baking paper on an ovenproof tray and paint with egg yolk.

Baking and final presentation of the panellets

1. Bake with the oven previously hot at 200º C for 10-12 minutes.
2. When we see that they begin to brown, we cover them with aluminum foil so that they do not burn us on the outside.
3. We remove to a rack and let cool before serving, if you can contain it, of course.

When you try them (if the recipe has convinced you, you will now be tasting this delicacy), they do not even have the panellets that are marketed at this time, the pine nuts are not counted and of course much cheaper than in pastry shops.

What are you waiting to try them? And remember that it is a dessert for the whole year, delicious.

You can see all the photos of the step by step in this homemade pancake recipe album .

A bit of history about panellets

• In artisanal manufacturing, there is a regulation that prohibits the use of sweet potato or potato as a substitute for part of the almond that makes up the base marzipan.
• This is a practice that although we can use when preparing our own biscuits at home, as a way to reduce costs, it is totally prohibited to be used by confectioners and pastry shops that market the product if they want to call them traditional biscuits .
• Currently we can find the most modern panellets on the market, combined with all kinds of ingredients, pistachios, orange, chocolate, coconut, coffee … all of them original and tasty.
• Although the traditional muffins are marzipan based with sugar, almonds, eggs and lemon zest, coated in pine nuts or almonds.

I leave you with your recipes (the ones you send me by email and facebook)

– Marta Aloy  tells me on facebook that the panellets are dead. I literally leave you with his comment that I found fantastic:

• “ I do every year around these dates. If you want to try to vary a little, in my family we add a little less sugar so that they are not so sweet (type 500 g. Almond, 400 g. Sugar). I highly recommend that you let the dough rest in the fridge covered with film, from one day to the next, you will see how the recipe earns much more (I know many people around here in Catalonia who do it) ”

– María Reyes Cañuelo sends me a photo with her family (thank you very much María)

• 500 g of ground almonds
• 500 g of sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• Lemon zest
• 250 g. boiled potato
• To garnish: pine nuts, chopped almonds, coconut, candied fruit, chocolate noodles, quince jelly.

Preparation: mash the potato with a fork and unite all the ingredients, do not knead, when everything is united, it remains as a dough, making the balls. Now garnish with whatever you want, the typical ones in Catalonia at least are pine nuts and almonds.

Those of pine nuts and almonds paint them with egg yolk so that they are golden brown. We put them in the oven (previously hot). Put the pine nuts and the almond, oven above and below the rest only oven below.

You can send me the photos of the panellets that you take on these dates, I will upload them to the recipe so that more people are encouraged to prepare this delicious sweet.