While not a traditionally Polish dish, we did discover a very popular cookie in Poland. It had become one of Ed’s favorites before I made the permanent move to PL.
The treats are wonderfully delicate, little rounds bits of sponge cake with a generous blob of jelly (a wide variety of flavors), all topped with chocolate. They come in a small package that is resealable as if that would be necessary.
The blue package says Delicje in a lovely script. A little detective work tells me that delicje translates to dainty, and dainty they are.
I’ve also read that Delicje has become so well known, so popular, that the brand name has become synonymous with these little cookies and vise versa, much like Coca-Cola and cola flavored soda.
My investigation also tells me that the proper name for these lovely bites is Jaffa Cake and they come from the UK, although I’ve heard Brits say that the Delicje cookies are better than the British Jaffa Cakes.
Come to find out, you can buy them on Amazon! The description says “Jaffa cake style european biscuits from Poland.”
In case you’re like me, and you think homemade is generally better, and it’s just fun to experiment with new things, I have a recipe for you. Yes, you can DIY your own Delicje.
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Homemade Delicje a Jaffe style cake from Poland
For the cake base, I made ladyfingers, piping them into circles rather than lines. I’ve made ladyfingers before when baking some of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipes, but this time, I used a simple recipe from Serious Eats that just uses one bowl, no separating the eggs. It batter and finished product turned out beautifully.
If you have a good source for lady fingers (I hear Trader Joe’s are nice), there is no reason why you couldn’t use them and just make long Delicje rather than round.
Once the little sponge cakes are baked, they’re topped with jam and dipped in chocolate. I took a shortcut with the chocolate.
To be truly professional, I should have tempered the chocolate, Tempering is a process that insures that the chocolate molecules align properly to set up nicely, giving you a crisp shiny finished product.
If you have a sous vide machine, with the precise temperature control, it’s the easiest way I’ve found to temper chocolate.
I just used a melted chocolate bark coating for dipping. If you go with purchased ladyfingers and chocolate coating, these become really fast and easy, but then again, for faster and easier, there is always Amazon.
I took some of these to work. My colleagues thought the fruity jam was a nice surprise and appreciated how surprising light and soft the cake was. How about you, have you tried Delicje a Jaffa style cake from Poland? I think you’ll love these.
Smacznego!
Lois
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Delicje a Jaffa style cake from Poland
- Prep Time: 30 min
- Cook Time: 24 min
- Total Time: 54 minutes
- Yield: approx. 30 cookies
- Category: dessert
- Method: baking
- Cuisine: Polish
Description
Light sponge cakes topped with jelly and covered in chocolate
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons corn starch
- 3/4 to 1 cup cup of your favorite jelly or jam
- 12 ounces chocolate flavored bark coating
Instructions
- Whisk together eggs, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl, heat over a pan of boiling water, being sure the bowl doesn’t touch the hot water and heat to 160 F
- Mix on high speed for 5 to 10 minutes, until 4 times the original volume and when the beaters are raised, the eggs should be thick enough to briefly mound up like soft serve as they drop
- Sift the flour and corn starch over the egg mixute and gently fold in until uniformly combined
- Fill a piping bag with a 1/2 inch round tip (or ziplock bag with 1/2 inch snipped off of one corner) and pipe into circles about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and 1 inch apart on a parchment lined baking pan
- Bake approximately 12 minutes until cakes are firm, being careful not to overbake, cool
- Top with jelly or jam, chill
- Melt bark coating according to package directions, stir, carefully dip the jellied tops of cookies into the chocolate, removing any excess chocolate without disturbing the jelly
- Chill before serving
An accountant by trade and a food blogger since 2009, Lois Britton fell in love with Polish cuisine during the years she lived in Poznań, Poland. As the creator of PolishHousewife.com, she loves connecting readers with traditional Polish recipes. Lois has a graduate certificate in Food Writing and Photography from the University of South Florida. She is the author of The Polish Housewife Cookbook, available on Amazon and on her website.
Jill
In Australia you can get Jaffa Cakes at Aldi.
polishhousewife
It would be interesting to do a side by side taste test.
Laurel
Yes, we love these. We’ve had the British ones and the Polish ones. Both good.
LAURA HULSE
just ate my first one SOOOOOOO good the cherry and chocolate go very well together
Florentyna
Lovely to see them receive love, but must correct the translation; “delicje” means something like “delicacies”. I believe for “dainty” you might be thinking of an unrelated, but similar word “delikatny”