„Rududu” or „Svetlana” Cookies 🍪🐻

December 22, 2018

The mere fact that you have opened this post lets me assume we have a great deal in common. 😏 I now know that you (like me) adore cookies, that you (like me) cannot hold out against „His Majesty the Sugar”, and that you are loyal to a good old flavour – in this case, the by-now-classic cookies with Rududu (like me, obviously).😁 So I will allow myself to assume that, since you are here, you already know which cookies we are going to recreate today – the Latvian „Svetlana”.

Rududu Cookies

These cookies always remind me of the house I grew up in and of my childhood, because – having a mother with as sweet a tooth as my own – I would very often come home from school to find a little pile of them on the kitchen table. Even now, when I am out shopping, I drop a few into my basket, because I am afraid that one day they will no longer be there, that they will vanish along with all those nostalgic products like „Jovaras” and „Fortūna” sweets (today's Fortūna would do better to hide under last year's leaves), „Princas” chocolate and the rest. So I started thinking – why couldn't I bake cookies like these at home? Perhaps that way I would insure myself against them potentially disappearing from the shelves?😁 And besides… What could possibly be better than homemade cookies? 🍪

Rududu Cookies

And here we finally are at the recipe!😀 Anyone who has tasted these cookies knows there is no need to go on about them. To get your cookies to turn out like mine, you will need a piping bag and nozzle and a silicone brush. I mentioned it in the recipe already, but I will say it once more: if you don't have these tools, even a plain teaspoon will do the job beautifully for spreading the Rududu onto the cookie, and the flavour really will not suffer for it. 😉 You can use that same teaspoon to drizzle the chocolate over the cookies as well.

So here's to good cookies for everyone!🤗

Rududu Cookies

Ingredients

225g room-temperature butter (cut into cubes)

180g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (+1 tsp for the Rududu mixture, if needed)

1 room-temperature egg

2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

360g (3 cups) flour

600g Rududu caramel spread

200g dark chocolate (at least 72%)

Instructions

For the cookies:Heat the oven to 180 degrees.Tip the sugar onto the cubed room-temperature butter and beat everything in a food processor or with a mixer until the consistency turns creamy (beat for at least 3 minutes)Add the vanilla extract to the mixture, crack in the room-temperature egg and beat well.In a separate bowl, sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Add this mixture to the butter a little at a time and knead until a firm cookie dough forms. The dough should be firm but also soft, and it should not crumble.On a floured worktop, roll the dough out to the thickness you want (mine came out about 4mm thick) and stamp out the cookies with your chosen cutter (I went with a 5cm round cutter)Transfer the cookies to a tray lined with baking paper and bake for about 6-8 minutes, depending on their thickness and on your oven. Mine took about 7 minutes. The cookies should not brown; they should stay pale (see the photo above). Once out of the oven, let them stand for 5 minutes, or they will crumble when you move them.Bake the dough offcuts too, as you will need them later, but bake them – unlike the cookies – until they brown and turn crisp.Leave the cookies and the offcuts to cool.
For the Rududu filling:Blitz about 80g of the browned offcuts in a food processor to fine crumbs.Add the crumbs to the Rududu a little at a time, stirring as you go. The crumbs are there to firm the Rududu up so that it holds its shape once piped onto a cookie. If the mixture becomes too stiff to pipe, you can adjust the consistency by adding a little vanilla extract.Pipe the mixture onto the cookies with a nozzle of your choice. (If you don't have one, you can simply spread the mixture onto the cookie with a spoon; it works perfectly well.)Put the filled cookies in the fridge for about 1.5 hours so they chill properly.
For the chocolate:For the chocolate to set properly on the cookies it has to be tempered. Break 133g of the chocolate into small pieces and put them in a bowl. Set the bowl over a pan of boiling water and, stirring constantly, melt it until the chocolate reaches 46-48°C (measure with a food thermometer). Take the chocolate off the bain-marie.Add the rest of the chopped chocolate to the melted chocolate and stir until the mixture is smooth and has cooled to 28°C.When you are ready to coat the cookies, warm the chocolate back up to 32°C.
Brush the chocolate onto the cookies with a pastry or silicone brush. If you don't have one, you can simply drizzle the chocolate over the cookies with a teaspoon. The chocolate should start setting on the cookies within a few minutes.Enjoy!