Mazarin cakes with raspberry (gluten free)

Mazarin is a small cake with (I think) Swedish roots. In Finnish this tiny delicacy is called masariini or mazariini. The cake consists of a pie crust filled with sugary almond paste and topped with a sugar glaze. There are versions with an additional jam put in and those are my favourite - especially the raspberry version.

Hope you enjoy these, too!



MAZARIN CAKES
Yield: about 15
Bake at 190 degrees (Celsius) for about 15 - 17 minutes

Pie crust:
300 g gluten free flour (I used a mix of everything I had in the cupboard)
200 g butter, at room temperature
100 g icing sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp almond flour
a pinch of salt

Using your hand, mix all of the ingredients together. The dough will be very soft at this stage, so you need to cool it for about 1 hour. If you are pressed for time, pop it in the freezer for a while. Top tip! When you start pressing the dough into the molds, take out a small portion at a time. The warmer the dough gets, the more difficult it is to get in place. One mold will need about a size of a golf ball of the dough.



Once cool, press into molds. Ideally, the mazarin cake molds are oval shaped, aluminum molds, and just about 2-3 cm in height. I could not find such at any store so I used small silicone cupcake forms instead.

FILLING
300 g marzipan
150 g butter, at room temperature
3 eggs
1 tbsp gluten free flour
About 1 dl of raspberry jam

Take out an electric mixer and beat the marzipan and butter smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time. You will get a rather loose batter. Mix in the flour.

Once you have the pie crust inside the molds, smooth about one teaspoon of raspberry jam to the bottom of each mold. Next, add the marzipan filling. Fill the molds up to about 3/4, or even slightly more. Bake at 190 degrees for about 15 minutes, depending on the size of the molds.

(If you want, you can omit the flour from the filling, but at least for me, without the flour the filling foamed to the sides. With the flour, once you bake them, the filling should rise up like a ball. Once you take them out of the oven and let them cool, you should get an even top.)

Once the crust gets a light brown colour, take the cakes out of the oven and remove from pan to cool. Once somewhat cooled, remove the molds (if you are using silicone molds - no need to remove the aluminum versions) and cool completely.

GLAZE
200 g icing sugar
3-4 tbsp cold water
(food coloring)

Mix all the ingredients together and using a spoon, cover the inside of the pie crust with the glaze. Leave to set. If you are pressed for time, but them in the fridge and the sugar will harden more quickly.

Enjoy with tea or coffee - I especially love these as a dessert for breakfast. :)