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My mom’s original korzinki recipe didn’t tell me how much it would make, so I happily went on to make 108 of these babies. Good thing there’s always plenty of folks willing to gobble up these goodies.
Surprisingly, they were really simple to make. They didn’t take much time at all but look like they should garnish a wedding dessert tray. They are delectable and completely precious. I shall refer to them as Meringue Celebrities. They even have the Elvis whirl!
Ingredients for Korzinki:
3 eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter (1/2 lb), at room temperature
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 1/2 Tbsp real mayonnaise
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour *measured correctly
Ingredients for toppings:
1 1/2 cups good raspberry preserves
Meringue Topping:
6 egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice
How to Make Korzinki:
Pre-heat the Oven to 350 ˚ F.
1. Using a paddle attachment, beat 3 eggs with sugar on medium speed in the electric mixer until even consistency (2-3 min).
2. Add softened butter and mix on medium/high speed until creamy even consistency (3-5 min)
3. Add baking soda and mayo and mix until well blended.
4. Add flour, 1 cup at a time. It should be a soft cookie dough consistency.
5. Use your hands to roll dough into gum-ball-sized circles of dough. Place dough into mini-muffin dishes. I used 3 (12-count) pans at a time.
6. Use your fingers to form a well in the dough and bake for 10 minutes, or until edges are golden.
7. Tip cookies onto a clean towel to cool to room temperature. To make a second batch right away, cool the muffin pan first by running cold water on the back of the pan.
8. Once cookies are at room temperature, spread 1/2 tsp raspberry preserves on top of each one.
9. Put meringue in a pastry bag or use a large ziplock bag and cut a 1/4″ diameter hole in one of the bottom corners. Pipe meringue over the raspberry preserve on top of each basket. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
How to make Meringue Cream:
Mix 6 egg whites and sugar on low speed until most of the sugar dissolves. Add lemon juice. Switch to high speed and beat until stiff peaks form, about 5 minutes.
If you are concerned about raw egg whites as cream, here’s an alternative frosting:
My mom sometimes puts a frosting on top, its the same frosting as for troobochki (another russian dessert): 4 oz cream cheese, softened, beat with 2 tbspn sugar and 1 tbspn lemon juice, then stir in an 8oz tub cool whip. That should be a very good topping as well!
Meringue and Raspberry Baskets "Korzinki" - Корзинки
Ingredients
Ingredients for Korzinki:
- 3 eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, 1/2 lb, at room temperature
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3 1/2 Tbsp mayonnaise*
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Ingredients for toppings:
- 1 1/2 cups good raspberry preserves
Meringue Topping:
- 6 egg whites, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/2 tsp lemon juice
Instructions
Pre-heat the Oven to 350 °F.
- Using a paddle attachment, beat 3 eggs with sugar on medium speed until even consistency (2-3 min).
- Add softened butter and mix on medium/high speed until creamy even consistency (3-5 min).
- Add baking soda and mayo and mix until well blended.
- Add flour, 1 cup at a time. It should be a soft cookie dough consistency.
- Use your hands to roll dough into gum-ball-sized circles of dough. Place dough into mini-muffin dishes.
- Use your fingers to form a well in the dough. Bake for 10 minutes, or until edges are golden.
- Tip cookies onto a clean towel to cool to room temperature. To make a second batch right away, cool the muffin pan first by running cold water on the back of the pan.
- Once cookies are at room temperature, spread 1/2 tsp raspberry preserves on top of each one.
- Put meringue in a pastry bag or use a large ziploc bag and cut a 1/4" diameter hole in one of the bottom corners.
- Pipe meringue over the raspberry preserve on top of each basket. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
How to make Meringue Cream:
- Mix 6 egg whites and sugar on low speed until most of the sugar dissolves. Add lemon juice.
- Switch to high speed and beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, about 5 minutes.
Notes
THESE ARE DELICIOUS, have been making them often since I first tried them from your website! thanks a lot love it! so does the fam:) which is always a good thing right? hhhahhaa
Hi Natasha – how long do these keep well in the fridge? I am going to try and make them for a church event this Saturday. If I make them Friday, will that be okay? Thanks!
They do keep pretty well in the fridge. You can make cookie part even several days ahead. The meringue topping is best fresh but still works the day before.
Hmm. looks good, I will try to make these sometime in the near future. For those of you that have a hard time making the baskets you can buy them at Cash&Carry store, they have 2 different sizes and are very neat looking and yammi too. I made my korzinki out of these. They are in freezers in big brown boxes. Sometimes I have to ask for them because they store them in the back in their big freezers (I think they call them tart shells) and you do have to bake them.
I have a recipe of a cream(belkoviy krem) that is with egg whites but it is safe for those who have concern of raw egg whites because it has cooked syrup that is mixed in to it. It is used to top Korzinochki or decorate cakes(I had my mother in law find out a recipe from a lady that professionally bakes cakes and uses this recipe).
Ingredients: 3 egg whites
For Syrup: 1.5 cups sugar & 1/2 cup water.
Beat 3 egg white. At the same time as you start beating your egg whites put the syrup in a pot on the stove to cook.
When the syrup comes to a boil, turn on your timer for 6 minutes(or just time 6 minutes). Reduce heat and let it boil, when 1 minute is left mix in 1/4 tsp dry lemon powder(limonnaya kislota) in the syrup.
Reduce the speed on your mixer and slowly (w/thin stream)pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites. Continue to beat 1-2 minutes more and your cream is ready.
It is really easy and it is a popular Russian cream that professional bakers use on cakes or Korzinochki.
Thank you for sharing Lena – I’ll have to try that!
I like this idea. I will definitely try this…I wonder how it will work with lemon preserves.
The lemon preserves sounds like a nice comination. I also saw a gal post my recipe to facebook and she stuck a raspberry into the side of the meringue on each one – they looked very cute!
So, I tried these babies! To start off they turned out really good! But, I had a few adjustments I had to make on my own. First of all, for some odd reason my dough apparently(now looking at your pictures) was too soft and I had a hard time rolling it into balls. I also didn’t want to add more flour, because I didn’t want them to come out tough. So what I did is I used two spoons to put the dough in the mini muffin tins and then I would wet my two index fingers in warm water and spread the dough around inside the muffin well. They rurned out great this way. ( The first batch I didn’t do this and they came out looking more like muffins, but when I did my little technique they came out looking more like korzinki). LOL. And also I used your mom’s frosting, though it’s very delicious, I also agree with Natalya that it wasn’t soft enough and therefore it didn’t look as cute on the korzinki as your meringue did. And I didn’t beat it long at all. Any suggestions on that? And also oddly I didn’t come close to making a 106 of these from the recipe, only about 60 or so. But overall, they still turned out very yummy. Just with the frosting not as pretty as I wanted them too 🙂
Your technique might be even better than mine – my korzinki kinda looked like little muffins too, but they still worked out – you only need a little space to put the raspberry preserves. I don’t know why it would have been hard to roll them. I’m glad they turned out good anyway, but it sounds like it would take a little more time to have to get your fingers wet for every one of them. The # of korzinki just depends on how big your dough balls are. I’m not sure what else to suggest for a topping – you may have better results with the troobochki frosting if you use a pastry bag with a star or flower tip to make them look nicer. Hope that helps!
Hi Natasha,
I was intending to ask you the same thing about the mayo. Ussualy I make my own mayo and, to make it, I use all you have mentioned above +…mustard. Never bought any mayo, but I hope the store bought one doesn’t have mustard in it :). I will buy a jar especially for this recipe.
Now, since I’m here, please let me say a word of appreciation about what are you doing here. I have discovered your blog not so long ago. I was born in Northern Romania, I leave in Canada but I love Moldavian/Ucrainean/Russion food. Bucovina’s cuisine got a lot of influence and i’m glad about that.
Besides, I love Jesus Christ very much as well! So, lots of reason to pass by 🙂
I”m so glad you found the site as well. God bless you and enjoy the recipes!
Hey Natasha, I just have a quick question. What does mayonnaise do for baking? I actually used this recipe and everybody from my family loved these. Thanks!
I think it makes the cookie softer. Mayo is made of eggs, oil, vinegar, lemon juice.. which are common cooking ingredients so it makes sense to use it. It was in the original recipe 🙂
Thanks, Natasha! I think its all about practice!
I made some this weekend and for some reason they did not turn out as I want them to be. I used mini-muffins dish, but looks like it was suppose to be in the regular muffin dish. Mostly I thnik that was the problem, they turned out more like muffins to me. Then I used the same topping like from your mom’s recepie and cream was too hard, I think it should have been more softer. This is the first time I ever did korzinki before, so it was not relly good experience. Over all the taste is good and we still ate them.
The meringue can take on different textures depending on how long you beat it. I don’t know what went wrong with the actually cookie part. They do look sort of like muffins as you can see in the picture. If they puffed up like muffins, maybe try mold them down more before baking next time. Hope that helps.
what a perfect idea for parties too! i throwing a christmas party and this just went to the top of my list for desserts!!!
just thought id give an update-made them for the party and everyone loved them. thank you so much for a great recipe!
Hi Alina, Thank you so much for letting me know. I’m so happy to hear it was a success for you 🙂
Natasha, thank you for this awesome recipe! These are totally scrumptious!!! I had a little mess-up though when I was making them…The last two ingredients (mayo and flour) call for 3 1/2 of each ingredient and I read them both as 3 1/2 cups! Imagine my confusion and then disappointment when I realized I just added 3 1/2 cups of mayo into my mix!!! LOL I was so mad. I just wasted a entire jar of mayo. But I wanted to try them so I started over and when I was finally finished it was almost midnight! But they were sooo GOOD! Thank you 🙂
oh no!! I’m glad you did make them again and liked them.
Making them for thanksgiving thanks for the recipe!
Hi Natasha I just have a question about the butter when baking I usually put unsalted butter but for this recipe is it suppose to be salted or unsalted butter.
Use unsalted. I’ll specify that in the recipe. I always use unsalted unless I mention it otherwise.
Do you chill the them in the frig for a day before eating? or right away?
You can serve them right away or chill them until ready to serve. They should be kept refrigerated if you aren’t eating them right away.
Thank you! I can’t wait to try these (and a ton of your other recipes as well). I have no idea how you and your hubby do not weigh 5000 pounds yet! I would be eating all day long if I had food like this sitting around all the time 🙂
ha ha, truth is, we both lost weight when I started cooking more. But thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment! 🙂
Two questions: the lemon juice for the meringue mixture; when does that get added to the egg whites?
And– is it safe to eat the meringues like this? I’m mostly familiar with meringues that have been baked; these have not, and I’m a little worried about giving raw egg whites to my little sister!
Thanks in advance!
Jilla
HI Jilla, Add the lemon juice to the egg whites at the same time as the sugar. Sorry I must have missed that. Also, if you are concerned about the egg whites, you can bake them then put them on. They are safe to eat for most people. I know people make frostings out of meringue (raw egg whites). I probably wouldn’t recommend them for pregnant women and small children. I keep them refrigerated until I serve them. My mom sometimes puts a frosting on top, its the same frosting as for troobochki (another russian dessert): 4 oz cream cheese, softened, beat with 2 tbspn sugar and 1 tbspn lemon juice, then stir in an 8oz tub cool whip. That should be a very good topping as well!
Eating raw eggs does carry a very small risk of salmonella food poisoning, and like Natasha said, should not be eaten by pregnant women, small children, the elderly, or by those with weakened immune systems. I would personally take the (very small) risk and eat these (unless prego)–I often don’t fully cook my eggs for breakfast anyway–but probably wouldn’t serve them at a large gathering as you never know who might be eating them.
It sounds like they would be yummy with the alternative frosting too–Natasha, you could add that at the end of your recipe so it’s there when the recipe is printed out. Just a thought.
Good idea; I will make that change. Thanks!
You can still make a meringue. The one that this recipe has is a French meringue. There are three different types of meringues – French, Italian, and Swiss. Italian and Swiss meringue has the egg whites cook while stirring. A Swiss meringue is made by whisking the egg whites and sugar in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. You want them to get to 130 F. After doing it once you won’t need a thermometer. There’s a certain consistency to look for. It foams up and almost triples in volume. Then you continue to whisk off heat until soft peaks. The Italian one is trickier. First, you beat the egg whites a bit to get them integrated. It is best to have your stand mixer on at low speed the whole time while this next step is happening. In a pan add equal parts sugar and water. This sugar syrup is cooked until the soft-ball stage (aka 234-240 F). Again, never used a thermometer. There is a technique to check it for soft-ball. It is not as risky as it sounds. Have a bowl of ice water nearby. Place thumb and pointer in water to numb fingers up a bit. Grab the sugar syrup as it is cooking. Quickly place in ice water. Take out and roll sugar between fingers. What you’re looking for is something that will roll into a soft ball. Hence, the name. You take this syrup and pour slowly into the egg whites as they are being whisked. Then you can crank up the mixer and whisk until soft peaks. Hope you enjoyed my little meringue lesson, lol.
Wow thanks Tim – I did enjoy the meringue lesson :). For the swiss one – do you just use a regular whisk to get it to triple in volume or do you use an electric egg beater?
After I put meringue on the korzinki, I put them back in the oven for about 10 minutes at 200 degrees. That makes them a little bit stiff on the surface and creamy on the inside. Out all the creams out there egg frosting is my favorite.
That is a great idea and it cooks it somewhat to make it a little safer. Thanks so much for sharing your tip!
oh ok… the karzinki they have at russian store are hard.. usually the ones made for weddings where they put whipping cream and either a raspberry of blaberry on top (or any fruit).. but since these crumble easily i see why the other ones wouldn’t be as good.
If you do decide to try them with the store-bought cookies, let me know how they turn out.
soooooooooo cute!
Natasha,
these look too cute.. I was wondering if they will be as good if instead of making the korzinki i can buy the ones that are sold at the russian store?
Do you think that would work????
I’m not sure what they have at the russian store. Without knowing what those are like, I couldn’t say yes or no. These korzinki are like shortbread cookies, they crumble easily. They are not a hard cookie.