Mignon

by | Apr 24, 2020 | Desserts

Mignon means small and pretty, dainty in English, in Hungary this word refers to mini filled cakes coated in a thick sugar glaze. Henrik Kugler was the first confectioner in Hungary who made mignon cakes in the 19th century.

The shape of the mignon cakes is usually a cube, but you can also see diamond and dome-shaped mignons. Mignons can be filled with butter cream, fruit jam, truffle or praline. The color of the glaze conforms to the flavor of the filling.

  • White glaze: mignons filled with marzipan, lemon or chestnut cream
  • Light green glaze: mignons filled with Chartreuse dyed marzipan or fruit jam
  • Light orange glaze: mignons filled with cream flavoured with orange or white butter pear liqueur
  • Light pink glaze: mignons filled with punch cream or fruit jam
  • Light brown glaze: mignons filled with coffee, hazelnut, almond, walnut or brittle cream
  • Dark brown glaze: mignons filled with chocolate cream

Making mignon is not an easy task, coating the mini cakes with the glaze will test your cooking skills and handiness. This is the reason why my first mignons you can see in the picture are far from perfect.

The key element of the whole process is to find the right consistency of the glaze. It has to be creamy but runny enough to be able to cover the cakes. Since the glaze thickens quickly as it cools, you have to work fast and dip the cakes into the glaze before it sets.

In order to save you a headache, I would recommend not slicing the cake into tiny cubes, just covering the whole cake with the glaze. That’s how I’m gonna make my next mignon cake.

Mignons with punch cream
Mignons with punch cream – photo: zserbo.com
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3 Comments

Hungarian cottage cheese

This is what Hungarian túró looks like

You often ask me what kind of cottage cheese (or curd cheese or farmer's cheese - call it what you want) I use in the recipes. In Hungary the store-bought cottage cheese is dry and crumbly as you can see in the picture. So if a recipe calls for túró, I mean this type. If you can't obtain túró, you can try to make your own from whole milk. Click on the link below.

Wish list

If you are looking for a Hungarian recipe that hasn't been published on this website yet, let me know, and I'll do my best to post it.

Metric system vs cup

In Hungary metric units are in use, all the recipes on this website are based on this system, so a kitchen scale is necessary. Since I’m not familiar with cup as a measurement unit, I convert grams to cups by using an online converter. The values in brackets, therefore, are only approximate volumes, so, please, double-check them before you start cooking.

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