DIY Hungarian treats for the Christmas season – RECIPES, VIDEOS

Have you ever wondered what Hungarians eat for treats when the Christmas season comes? What sweet snacks do they eat between the Christmas feasts? You need no further search as in this article, I will tell you everything about just that. What is more, you could try out the treats at home even if you do not have any shops around you that sell these things.

Let us start that journey by talking about the most popular sweet snack, the treat of treats when it comes to Christmas time in Hungary, the szaloncukor (salon candy). The szaloncukor is a typical Hungarian snack which, in many households, is also used as decoration for the Christmas tree. One aspect of this candy is the wrapping itself, which you can also customise to match the decor of the tree. If you are interested in it in greater detail, you can find out who sneaks the candy from its wrapping, but I will move on to how it is made. Because there is a wide variety of fillings for this candy, you can customise it for your family’s taste, but in this article, I can give you only a few examples.

Szaloncukor (salon candy)

Ingredients:

Chestnut filling:

• 250 g chestnut paste
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp apricot jam
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Coconut filling:

• 500 g granulated sugar
• 10 tbsp (~150 ml) water (about 100 ml more on the side if needed)
• 120 g coconut shavings
• 2 small packets of vanilla sugar
• 2 tbsp food starch

Jelly filling:

• 250 ml fruit juice (to your liking)
• 6 gelatine sheets
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar

For the coating:

• about two bars of chocolate of your liking

Instructions:

Chestnut:

Add the cocoa powder to the chestnut paste, the jam, cinnamon, and honey, and mix the ingredients well. Make about 2-3 cm cylinders from the paste and put them aside.

Coconut:

Add the water and the sugar to the bowl and boil it for 8 minutes after it first starts to boil. Add the coconut shavings and a little bit more water. When the water boils away again, add in the vanilla sugar. Boil it for 5 more minutes while constantly stirring. Mix in the starch and put the whole paste on something to let it cool. Once it cools, wet your hands and form similar cylinders as before.

Jelly:

Soak the gelatine sheets in cold water until they become soft. In a separate bowl, start boiling the fruit juice and add the sugar. Take out the now soft sheets of gelatine from the cold water and squeeze the water out of them. Add the sheets to the boiling fruit juice and mix them in. Pour them into an ice cube tray of sorts (could be any shape, but the regular rectangular is perfect) and let it cool down.

Coating:

Once you are ready with the fillings, melt some chocolate of your choice, and you can either pour it over the fillings or you can submerge the fillings like a fondue. Put the coated treat on parchment paper and let the chocolate harden. You can follow the recipe of Receptvideók in this video:

You can make a wrapper with parchment paper on the inside and any soft paper you want on the outside. You could also use food-safe plastic foils or sheets, and here is a video on how you can make your own re-usable cloth candy wrappers. There is also a video on how the szaloncukor is usually made in a chocolate manufacture.