Original Raffaello

Preparation steps

• I did not write the necessary time for this recipe, because it depends on whether you want to prepare certain ingredients yourself or buy them ready-made. The most important thing for the authentic taste of these pralines is the quality of coconut flour. You will recognize it by the fact that it does not fly in the bag due to static electricity and seems to have less of it, when you compare two bags of the same weight. This means that it has not been previously used to obtain coconut oil. I will not list the brand I used, because the quality can vary with the same brand between different shipments.
• Cream
• Grind the coconut flour three times in a coffee grinder. On each occasion, first grind only the coconut flour. Shake the grinder constantly. When you notice that it has gathered at the bottom of the grinder, open it and add two teaspoons of sugar, stir gently and grind again. Quality coconut flour will release a lot of oil and look wet and greasy.
• In a bowl, mix the ground coconut with two tablespoons of sugar, vanilla sugar and starch flour. I used bourbon vanilla sugar, for a finer taste, but you can also use plain if you wish, so the cream will look more authentic without vanilla seeds.
• Grind the mixture again in a coffee grinder several times. The goal is to get a very fine coconut flour that is lumpy in consistency.
• Boil the sweet cream and mix it with the ground mixture. Pour in as much cream as you need to get a thick cream of the consistency as in the picture.
• Put the cream in the fridge for an hour, to squeeze. At that time, you can blanch the almonds, if you don’t already have blanched ones, and cut the balls out of the wafer.
• Briefly mix the butter with a mixer in a deep narrow bowl. Add the coconut cream and almond flavor and mix everything into a smooth mixture. Carefully add the drops of flavor, if you add too much, the almonds will take on the taste of the cream! I used the aroma of Dr. Oetker.
• Leave the cream to squeeze for another hour in the fridge or preferably overnight.
• Cutting balls out of wafers
• First cut the wafer into rows.
• Cut out the individual hemispheres.
• Cut the corners of the hemispheres with a knife or carefully tear them with your fingers.
• Filling the balls
• Take one tablespoon of the cream for decoration.
• Fill the cream into a round-shaped pastry bag or use a plain solid freezer bag.
• Cut off the top of the bag only when you have filled it with cream.
• Fill half of the hemispheres so that there is slightly more cream in each than the edge.
• Press one blanched almond into each.
• Connect with an empty hemisphere.
• Carefully press the halves into each other to form a regular ball. A little pressure is quite enough, otherwise they will crack in your hand.
• Decoration
• Mix a separate tablespoon of cream with melted butter and powdered sugar. If you have a thick mixture, add a little more butter.
• Brush each ball with the mixture.
• Roll the coated balls in coconut flour.
• Store in the refrigerator in a closed plastic container. From this mixture I got 55 balls. The cream in this recipe, in the opinion of everyone who has tried it so far, has the same authentic taste as the cream bought by Raffaello. But the difference is that the wafer absorbs some of the liquid and fat from the cream and coating over time and becomes soft. If anyone has a suggestion on how to prevent this, please let me know!