"Hedgehogs" - delicious and simple cookies
The recipe for the Hedgehog cake is always standard – only the quantity of ingredients changes, some optional ingredients are added, and various cream variations are offered. Let's remember the classic recipe for this delicacy.
Classic "Hedgehogs"
Ingredients for biscuit
- Eggs – 5 pcs. (large)
- Sour cream or kefir – 250-300 ml.
- Sugar - 300 gr.
- Flour – 700-800 g (about 3 cups)
- Baking powder – 1.5 packets or 2 level teaspoons.
- Vanilla sugar – 1 packet (or ¼ teaspoon vanilla essence).
Ingredients for the cream
- Condensed milk – 1 can
- Butter (not less than 72.5% fat) – 300 gr.
Recipe
- First, make the sponge cake. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a baking sheet or rimmed pan with parchment paper, allowing the edges to extend beyond the edges.
- Add vanilla sugar to kefir/sour cream and mix thoroughly.
- Beat the eggs with sugar until soft peaks form, then gradually add the kefir/sour cream to the egg mixture, continuing to beat at low speed.
- Add baking powder and sifted flour to the resulting mixture and mix thoroughly again. See recipe.
- Pour the resulting batter into the pan and immediately bake for 20 minutes. Test the cake with a toothpick – it should come out clean and dry.
- While the sponge cake is baking, let's make the cream. Combine room-temperature butter with half the condensed milk in a bowl and beat with a mixer at medium speed, gradually adding the remaining condensed milk to taste. Once the cream turns white (you can find a photo to see what it should look like), cover the bowl with a lid or plastic wrap and refrigerate.
- Remove the pan from the oven and immediately, while the cake is still warm, cut out circles. This is easiest to do with a glass, mug, or cookie cutter of the desired shape.
- Crumble the remaining sponge cake into small pieces by hand and return to the oven for another 7 minutes to dry. While it's resting, check the recipe again.
- We take out the biscuit crumbs and grind them in a blender or, placing them on a horizontal surface and covering with film, roll over the crumbs with a rolling pin.
- Take the frosting out of the refrigerator and spread it over half of the circles. The frosting shouldn't be too thin, otherwise the "Hedgehogs" will be dry. Then, place another circle on top of the frosted circles and frost the entire structure, both on top and on the sides.
- Once all the cakes are coated, sprinkle them all over with biscuit crumbs, then refrigerate for two to three hours to allow the biscuit to soak in. However, this dessert is safe to eat even without refrigeration!
As you can see, the recipe for the "Hedgehog" cake dessert is very simple. To add a personal touch, you can mix the biscuit crumbs with nuts, grated chocolate, or poppy seeds. To make your hedgehog cakes aesthetically pleasing and look great in photos, you can grind the biscuit crumbs very finely and then coat the cakes with them through a sieve, garnishing them with almonds or walnuts. You can also vary the flavor of the cake by adding lemon zest and juice. It's all up to your imagination.
No-bake Hedgehog Cake
A similarly named "hedgehog" cake is also common, but both in its ingredients and appearance, this dessert is completely different from the classic treat of that name. It literally resembles a hedgehog, which always delights children. Besides the fact that this dessert looks beautiful in photos and is delicious, it has another advantage: its recipe requires no baking. So:
Ingredients
- Sweet cookies – 350 gr.
- Condensed milk (can be boiled) – 1 can
- Cocoa powder (unsweetened) – 5 tablespoons (more is possible)
- Powdered sugar – 100 g
- Butter – 100 gr.
- Peeled sunflower seeds
- Milk or cream – 100-150 ml.
Recipe
- Grind the cookies in a blender or meat grinder until they become very fine crumbs.
- Add 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder (leave 1) and all the powdered sugar to the mixture.
- Add melted butter and condensed milk to the mixture and mix thoroughly. If the mixture is still a bit dry, add cream.
- Separate three small pieces from the mixture, mix them with the remaining cocoa, and roll them into three balls—two small and one larger. These will be the hedgehog's eyes and nose. If you're making several small hedgehogs, make as many eyes and noses as you need for the number of hedgehogs you need.
- From the remaining mass we mold ovals, from which we draw out noses (you can look at the photo on the Internet, hedgehogs are molded very easily).
- Let's look at the recipe and... we'll cover the hedgehog's entire body with seeds – these will be our hedgehogs' needles.
- And as the final touch we add a nose and eyes to the hedgehogs.
A beautiful and delicious dessert is ready!
