My Grandmother's Christmas Cookies: Žerbo
My grandmother's žerbo are the pride and joy of her Christmas cookie offerings. They are more of a cake than a cookie, but traditionally cut into bite-size pieces. They are fairly complicated, made up of 9 neatly piled layers, and cut into delicate little diamonds. Žerbo are technically not a Czech dessert. The recipe was brought over to the States by Hungarian immigrants, who popularized it here. Eventually it made its way to Czechoslovakia from here. My grandmother picked this recipe up from the mother of one of my mom's best friends from her high school in Queens, soon after my mother emigrated with her parents.
You will need:
For the dough:
450g all-purpose flour
300g margarine
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 packet yeast
1/8 to 1/4 c. milk
For the layers:
300g walnut
370g granulated sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar (optional)
About 1/2 a jar of apricot jam
About 1/2 a jar of seedless raspberry jam
For the chocolate topping:
150g semi-sweet baking chocolate
50g margarine
2 tsp dry instant coffee (not pictured, but can be Nescafé or Taster's Choice)
2 tbsp cognac (not pictured)
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp cold water
Begin by assembling your dough. Using a kitchen scale, add your flour and margarine, then crack in your eggs and the other dry ingredients. Keep the milk handy but you won't need it yet.
You can fit it into your standing mixer or grab your hand mixer but don't start to mix it yet - you should get everything else ready first.
Grind your walnuts and sugar (and vanilla sugar, if you want) together in a food processor.
Open your two jar of jam and whip each one a bit with a small fork to get them a bit smoother (not pictured, sorry).
Now, start mixing your dough. If opting for a standing mixer, you should use the dough hook and start it up on the lowest speed possible. Once it starts to combine you can increase the speed to medium. The dough will slowly come together but if it's still very crumbly, you can add a bit of your milk. Add no more than 1/8 of a cup to start, then dribble in a bit more if you need to. The dough should pull itself together at this point.
Drop it onto a lightly floured board and knead it for a minute. Flour the board again and roll the dough into a short log with your hands.
Layer 1: On your lightly floured board, roll the first piece of dough out into a big square. You will need to flip the dough at least twice, and gently flour your board each time.
When it's large enough, fit it into the bottom of a greased 10" square pan, or if you don't have one, into 2/3 of a greased cookie sheet. Press it out with your fingers to fill the pan. If some spots are too wide, trim the edges and use it to patch up any holes or short sides.
This will be the easiest layer of all! After this things get will get more complicated...
Layer 2: Throw a few spoonfuls of raspberry jam onto the dough and spread it out smoothly with an offset spatula, almost to the very edge of the dough.
Layer 3: Spoon half of your nut & sugar mix onto the jammy dough and spread it out smoothly.
Layer 4: Roll out the next third of your dough to a large square, roughly the size of your pan. Gently lay it into the pan on top of the first three layers. Tug the edges to fit if they are too short, and trim and patch as needed. Be gentle, as it will tear!
Layer 5: Throw a few spoonfuls of apricot jam onto the dough and spread it out smoothly with an offset spatula, almost to the very edge of the dough.
Layer 6: Spoon the remaining half of your nut & sugar mix onto the jammy dough and spread it out with care.
Layer 7: Roll out the final third of your dough to the size of your pan and gently place it on top of everything. Tug, trim and patch as necessary.
Congrats - you are now ready to bake (though this isn't the final layer)!
Place your pan in the oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes, rotating the pan every 15-20 minutes.
While you bake, prepare the chocolate topping. Put all your ingredients into a small, heavy pot and heat them on a very low flame, stirring constantly as soon as the chocolate begins to melt.
Continuing stirring until the chocolate becomes completely smooth, then remove it from the heat to let it cool.
As it cools, give it a stir every few minutes to make sure it stays smooth.
The cake is ready when the top has turned a deep golden color all over.
Pull it out of the oven and let it cool until just barely warm. Cut around the edge of the pan. It will be difficult.
Layer 8: Put only 2-3 spoonfuls of raspberry jam on top, and spread it extremely thinly across the top.
Layer 9: When the chocolate is barely warm, pour all of it on top. Tilt the pan as needed until the chocolate topping covers everything evenly.
Try not to use your offset spatula at all, in order to keep the surface of the chocolate nice and glossy.
Leave it out at least overnight. You can cover it with a dishtowel or paper towels once it's cool, but be careful because the surface is easily marked up. The following day you can begin to cut it. First cut off all the imperfect edges to leave only the neat nine-layered center of your pan.
It will be very difficult to cut because the sugar, walnuts, and jam will have caramelized together. On the upside, you get lots of yummy edges to snack on!
Next, make parallel cuts on the diagonal, 3/4 to 1 inch apart.
Then cut straight lines the same distance apart. Then, using an offset spatula, you can gently begin to remove your žerbo from the pan.
Be very careful not to mark up the surface in any way. My grandmother informed me that when he was alive, my grandfather always used to cut the žerbo for her. He was an electrical engineer with serious drafting skills, and I can now wholeheartedly agree that it takes an advanced degree to make the perfect diamond žerbo I remember from my childhood. I may need to call in some favors next year... But ours weren't too bad! You should store them in the fridge, and when you're ready, serve them in cupcake liners of your choosing.
When you're done with all your Christmas baking, you get the honor of laying out a sweet spread of cookies, and assembling a delicious tin of cookies for friends and family.
You should be able to spot my grandmother's nut and jam strudel, žerbo, coconut kisses (sorry I don't have a recipe for them yet), biscotti, bears paws, vanilla crescents, and linzer cookies.
Merry Christmas to you all, dear readers, or as the Czech say, Veselé Vánoce, a šťastný nový rok! That's Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Love to all,
Sarah
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