almonds toasting in the oven waft out their warm-homey-balm with a power that casts an "uuummmm" spell over anyone within smelling distance. grinding up the toasted nuts in the mini-prep is a simple way to add the rich, buttery almond flavor to all kinds of dishes. their addition to this recipe makes these little square cookies irresistible. no need for a cookie jar–there is never even one left to store. adapted from the original kaboose.com recipe, by wendy kalen, these cookies are pretty, crunchy, tasty and easy to make. i often give them as a home-made hostess gift, because they are on my regular baking schedule, and so i always have the dough in the freezer.
ingredients
• ½ cup almonds
• ½ cup unsalted butter
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup chocolate chips
- Heat oven to 350 degrees. toast almonds on cookie sheet 8-10 minutes or until fragrant and golden in color. let cool completely.
- beat butter in the kitchen aid bowl on medium until smooth. add sugar. beat until combined, scraping side of bowl occasionally. beat in egg yolk until combined. add vanilla and almond extracts. beat until combined.
- in miniature food processor grind cooled nuts finely. add flour, ground nuts and salt to the butter/sugar mixture & beat until well combined.
- put the dough in a long piece of plastic wrap and form press it into a rectangle 12-inches-by-1½ -inches-by 1½ inches. chill it in the freezer at least one hour. Slice cookies ¼-inch thick.
• bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned.• remove from the oven and let then rest on cookie sheet 5 minutes so they harden a little bit. remove to cooling rack to cool completely.
• melt chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals until smooth & creamy.
• spread a thin layer of chocolate on half of each cookie. transfer to cooling rack to dry completely.
make-ahead
the cookies can be made through chilling in step 4, wrapped well, stored in the refrigerator up to 1 week, or the freezer up to 6 months.
2 comments:
Lovely post. It's interesting that there's an old David Lebovitz recipe in "Room for Dessert" that looks almost identical, but uses pecans instead of almonds + bittersweet instead of semisweet for dipping. It's a great recipe, as I'm sure this one is.
Grateful for shariing this
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