Vegan sörur

Vegan Sörur

The recipe here was a very special experience for me personally. Sörur are a typical specialty in Iceland, a kind of hardcore cookies with a marzipan base, butter cream and chocolate coating. Sörur are an integral part of Icelandic Christmas baking in particular, but they are also very popular in the country.

For the classic Sörur recipes you mainly need egg whites and butter, so not for vegans. But how do you make Sörur that tastes as close as possible to how Sörur should taste, but is also suitable for vegans?

So I started looking for how to recreate this traditional recipe with other ingredients so that the result still tastes “right” - but without any animal products.

I then found a recipe with chickpea water, which is boiled down and whipped (as a substitute for egg whites), and with vegan butter and coconut cream, which ultimately complements the chickpea taste to such an extent that the result actually tastes exactly the same - despite completely different ingredients like the classic original.

I then presented the vegan Sörur to my daughter, who loves Sörur, with the announcement "another recipe" without explaining what the other recipe was about. She was thrilled and found the Sörur very tasty, but said that the base was a little crunchier than usual and tasted a little less like marzipan. She was surprised that they were vegan Sörur. And afterwards I was happy to take a bag of Sörur with me. But they won't be available until tomorrow!

Ingredients

150 ml juice from a can of chickpeas

250 g powdered sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar powder

200 g ground almonds

300 g vegan butter

150 g coconut cream

200 g powdered sugar

3 tsp instant coffee powder

1 Tbsp baking cocoa

1 pinch of salt

200 g dark chocolate

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) upper/lower heat.

Drain and collect the juice from the chickpeas and reduce it to about 2/3 in a small pot, then let it cool down again.

Slowly stir the boiled water in a mixing bowl for 3 minutes.

Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat until the mixture is soft and fairly stiff.

Then, in a large bowl, add the icing sugar a spoonful at a time while continuing to beat the mixture.

Then carefully fold the ground almonds into the stiff mixture.

Then place the dough with two teaspoons in small heaps with plenty of space between them on two baking trays lined with baking paper and bake/dry in the oven at 200 °F (100 °C) upper and lower heat for about 2 hours. Then turn off the oven and let the dough piles cool in the oven.

For the cream, beat the coconut cream and the cold butter with the powdered sugar, the instant coffee powder, the baking cocoa and a pinch of salt in a suitable mixing vessel until you have a nice, uniform cream.

Then spread the cream onto the bases with a teaspoon to create a kind of hemisphere.

Then let the bases with the cream set in the freezer for at least 1 hour.

Melt the dark chocolate in a water bath, then let it cool down a little.

Then brush the creamy top of the sorur with the dark chocolate and then let it solidify again in the freezer or refrigerator (please always keep it in the freezer or refrigerator!).

Then serve the vegan Sörur well chilled.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]