Panellets
A Catalan sweet traditionally eaten for All Saints, during the Castanyada, alongside roast chestnuts and sweet wine. The paste is marzipan with one addition that changes everything: cooked sweet potato or potato. It keeps the sweets moist and soft inside instead of hardening like pure marzipan. The classic coating is pine nuts, but there are a dozen versions and several are usually made at once.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Cooking the sweet potato 25 min
- Almond paste 15 min
- Chilling 45 min
- Shaping 25 min
- Baking 10 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneCook and sieve the sweet potato
Boil the sweet potato (about 250 g) in its skin until tender, about 25 minutes, peel, cool slightly and push it through a sieve rather than blending. A blender releases starch and turns it to glue. Weigh out exactly 150 g — more and the paste is too wet to shape.
Ingredients: 400 g ground almonds · 300 g sugar · 150 g sweet potato · 1 pcs egg · 1 pcs lemon
Knead the almond paste
Mix the ground almonds with the sugar, add the sieved sweet potato, egg and lemon zest and knead into a firm, pliable paste like marzipan. If it sticks to your hands, add ground almonds a spoonful at a time.
Ingredients: 400 g ground almonds · 300 g sugar · 150 g sweet potato · 1 pcs egg · 1 pcs lemon
Pliable as marzipan, not sticking to your hands.Chill the paste 45 minutes
Wrap in film and refrigerate 45 minutes. The chilling is practical: warm paste is tacky, so the nuts sink into it instead of sitting on the surface, and the balls lose their shape on the tray.
Ingredients: 400 g ground almonds · 300 g sugar · 150 g sweet potato · 1 pcs egg · 1 pcs lemon
Divide the paste into variants
Divide the paste: keep half plain for the pine nut version and split the rest into three — work a tablespoon of cocoa into the first, coffee dissolved in a teaspoon of hot water into the second, and keep the third for the coconut version. Panellets are usually made in several versions at once — the plate should be varied.
Ingredients: 200 g pine nuts · 60 g almonds · 60 g desiccated coconut · 2 tbsp cocoa · 1 tsp coffee
Shape balls and coat them
Heat the oven to 200 °C. Roll walnut-sized balls and coat them: the plain ones in pine nuts, the coffee ones in flaked almonds, the coconut ones in desiccated coconut, and dust the cocoa ones with the remaining cocoa. Press the nuts on with your palm — loosely coated, they fall off in the oven.
Ingredients: 200 g pine nuts · 60 g almonds · 60 g desiccated coconut · 2 tbsp cocoa · 1 tsp coffee
Press them on — otherwise the nuts fall off.Glaze with egg and bake briefly
Brush with beaten egg and bake 10 minutes at 200 °C, until the nuts turn golden. Short and hot: longer baking dries the almond paste, and panellets should stay moist inside.
Ingredients: 1 pcs egg
Ten minutes, until the nuts turn golden.Cool on the tray
Cool them on the tray without moving them — hot panellets are soft and break as you lift them. Once cool they firm up enough to be arranged in paper cases.
Ingredients: 200 g pine nuts · 60 g almonds · 60 g desiccated coconut · 2 tbsp cocoa · 1 tsp coffee
Before you start
Potato instead of sweet potato
Both ordinary potato and sweet potato (moniato in Catalan) are used traditionally. Sweet potato gives a sweeter paste, potato a more neutral one in which the almonds come through more clearly. Both versions are popular in Catalonia.
Other coatings
Besides those listed, panellets are made with a glacé cherry on top, rolled in chopped hazelnuts, topped with a piece of dried apricot, or dipped in dark chocolate. The paste stays the same.
A week in a tin
Panellets keep a week in an airtight box and harden with time — which is normal and how many people prefer them. The raw balls freeze well: bake from frozen, adding 3 minutes.
