Croatian Recipes: Breskvice

Breskvice (photo credit: fini recepti)

Breskvice, or peach-shaped sweets, are one of the most common sweets made in Croatia.

Often found at weddings, christenings, family parties, they are particularly popular in the east of the country. They are time-consuming to make but are worth the effort.

Ingredients

Eggs – 6
Icing sugar – 200 g
Vanilla sugar – 1 sachet
Oil – 20 ml
Flour – 500 g
Lemon – 1/2
Milk – 4 1/2 teaspoons
Baking powder – 1 small pack
Jam (peach or apricot)- 250 g
Cocoa – 2 teaspoons
Rum – 2 teaspoons
Walnuts – 1 1/2 cups (ground)
Food colouring – red/yellow
Peach Brandy
Sugar

Instructions

1. Pour flour into a bowl and add the grated lemon skin.

2. Mix the baking powder with 3 teaspoons of milk and leave to rise.

3. Beat the eggs and add the vanilla sugar. Keep beating adding oil little by little at the same time.

4. Mix the eggs into the flour and the baking powder mixed with milk and mix until dough is soft.

5. Sprinkle flour on a board and shape the dough into a loaf. Place the formed loaf in the fridge for 20 minutes.

6. Take a small piece of the dough, roll it out, cut into pieces the size of noodles and then shape them into balls. Place the balls on wax paper on a baking tray.

7. Bake the peach balls at 180 ° C for 15 minutes in the oven until they are golden brown under.

8. With a knife scoop out the inside of the peach balls but be careful that the peach balls will not break up when the filling goes in.

Filling 

1. Put the scooped insides in a food processor. Add rum, cocoa, jam and milk (1 1/2 tablespoons). Move to a bowl and add in the ground walnuts and mix well and make sure filing is moist (add more milk too if required).

2. Fill in the balls with the filing and close halves together.

3. Add 2 drops of red food colouring to 1/4 cup of water and mix. Add 2 drops of yellow food colouring to 1/4 cup of peach brandy. Dip half the ball in the red colouring and the other half in the yellow. Roll in sugar.

Dobar tek!

(Recipe courtesy of Fini Recepti)