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Panellets (Paleo-ets) – ‘Traditional’ Catalan All Saints Dessert

Traditional in Catalunya, where I live, and Valencia, panellets are the traditional sweet of All Saints Day. (Which was 1st of November.) In Catalan, panellet means 'little bread'. They are all over the bakeries and shops here, mostly the traditional ones rolled in pine nuts. But there are countless varieties all based on more or less the same recipe of almond flour, sugar and potato. Well. We know how I feel about sugar and potatoes, right? So I set out to create my own panellets, to ease the temptation in the shops. (Honestly? I'm not overly tempted. They are lovely, but they are way too sweet for me! Phew!) I don't generally make 'sweet' things as I'm luckily blessed with NOT having a sweet tooth. As for cooking ingredients, I tend to shy away from anything with the word 'sugar' in the name. But in the grand scheme of things, 50g of coconut palm sugar divided between 24 panellets is a pretty decent ratio. Anyway, it all started with a sweet potato....
Servings 24
Ingredients
  • 300 grams cooked and mashed sweet potato (I peeled and chopped two huge ones and plan on making Corned Beef Hash with the leftovers.)
  • 300 grams almond flour
  • 50 grams coconut palm sugar
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 zest of lemon
  • 1 egg, separated
  • 100 grams pine nuts
  • 100 grams chopped almonds
  • 1 teaspoon instant coffee
Instructions
  1. Cook the peeled and chopped sweet potato in boiling water then measure out 300g and allow to cool. Like I said, I'm using the leftovers for tomorrow – I'm terrible at measuring stuff in advance!

  2. When it's cool, mash it up in a bowl and add the zest of one lemon. Mix it well.

  3. Add your coconut palm sugar and honey to this bowl, mix well. I actually just used a potato masher then mixed everything with a fork instead of my hand blender and it worked great. (Less washing up - yay!)

  4. Throw in the egg yolk and the almond flour. Mix it all together to get a nice dough.

  5. Now it gets messy. I actually thought this would be a good point to get kids involved - if I had kids. But I don't, so I had to do it myself. Roll the dough into little balls about an inch or so big. Wet your hands with cold water first and it makes it much easier. Then roll them around in the pine nuts and place them on a baking sheet covered with greaseproof paper.

    I did this until I ran out of pine nuts (about 12 balls) then I rolled the rest in almond pieces. (Pinenuts are expensive!!)

    I did 12 with pine nuts. Then 6 with almonds. THEN I threw in a teaspoon of instant coffee into the dough and OH MY, these were DELISH!!! Next time, I'll add the coffee at the beginning. Obviously, if you don't like coffee, you shouldn't add coffee. You could also add a bit of cinnamon or cocoa powder to the dough.
  6. Brush the balls (Oh ha ha.) with egg white and bake them in a pre-heated oven at about 200 C for 20 minutes until the nuts start to brown.

  7. LET THEM COOL before you take a bite out of them and burn your tongue. Like I did.