Chocolate marzipan hearts

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• 300 g flour
• 1 orange(s)
• 1 egg(s)
• 5 tbsp cocoa powder (drinking chocolate)
• 6 tbsp sugar
• 150 g butter
• 3 tbsp white rum
• 50 g almonds, finely chopped
• 1 orange(s)
• 200 g marzipan
• 100 g powdered sugar
• Chocolate coating and sugar for coating

Instructions

Working time approx. 20 minutes; Rest time approx. 1 hour; Total time approx. 1 hour 20 minutes

small cake or dessert

Mix the flour with cocoa and sugar, add the butter in small pieces and the egg, and knead into a dough. Slowly add enough orange juice to form a firm, smooth dough. Let it rest for an hour. Knead the marzipan with all the ingredients and the juice of one whole orange. Be careful not to make the marzipan too runny; use no more than 2 tablespoons of orange juice. Using a heart-shaped pastry cutter, cut out hearts from the rolled out dough and fill each one with a heaped teaspoon of marzipan mixture. If you don’t have pastry cutters, cut out hearts using a regular 8 cm heart cutter and brush both sides of the dough with egg yolk before folding it together. The specified amount is enough – depending on the thickness of the dough – for 8 to 10 hearts with a diameter of 8 cm. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, let cool, then cover with tempered chocolate and decorate as desired. The cakes will keep in a tin for several weeks and are perfect with cream, fruit, and/or ice cream for a dessert that’s always on hand.