Mediterranean Almond Cookies
Easy, no effort and delicious - these Mediterranean Almond Cookies are the perfect cookies for a special occasion. Cut them in heart shapes before baking and stain the powder sugar pink to make them the perfect cookies for Valentine's Day.
Servings 20 people
Calories 140kcal
Ingredients
- 1 butter stick unsalted
- 3 eggs I use 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks, then I store the remaining egg whites for breakfast next day
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 150 g sliced almonds
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 shotglass cognac or brandy
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 lb confectioner's sugar please note that if you are using this recipe list for calculating calories, you have to use only 3 tbsps of powder sugar instead of the whole pound.
- food coloring optional or as desired
Instructions
- Blend the almond slices. I use the pulse function in the blender until i get a powder almond mix. These functions vary from blender to blender, so please see which function in your blender would give you the best result.
- Add baking soda to flour, mix well and put aside.
- I use a hand held mixer to beat eggs and sugar together. Once smooth, then add softened butter and keep mixing. Then add cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and cognac and keep mixing well.
- Finally add almond mix and flour. At some point the mixer doesn't work so well, so you might have to mix the final stage of the cookie dough by hand. Once you have a homogeneous dough, cover and refrigerate for about an hour.
- Using a rolling pin, roll the chilled dough in a thin layer. Cut with cookie cutter shapes of choice. You can also just roll by hand in a ball shape. I sometimes use a little extra flour to avoid the pin sticking to the dough.
- Bake cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about 175 degrees Celsius) for 20 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.
- Let the cookies cool down in a rack for about 30 minutes.
- Mix confectioner's sugar with the food coloring of your choice. You can just keep it white which is the traditional way of making these cookies.
- Roll the cookies in the mix and put them aside. Add some more powder sugar on top of the cookies before serving. This recipe made 20 cookies for me using the cookie cutters i had, that might vary a bit depending on what you are using to shape your cookies.
Notes
- If you're going to use food coloring, please take this note into consideration. The colors tend to run into each other, so you have to be extra careful while if you use only one color you have a bit more freedom. Also, you can add a bit more sugar to the cookies as you serve them. The powder food coloring really stains, my kids get pink fingers when they eat the pink cookies.
- I use the red color more than the pink because with red I can achieve either a red finish or a pink finish depending on how much I add to the confectioner's sugar.
Nutrition
Calories: 140kcal