Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Chocolate Orange Almond Cookies

almondpastecookies

Like I mentioned a few days ago, I've been baking quite a bit. One of the things currently residing in my freezer is this little cookie, a darling chewy bite with surprisingly much flavor. It's made from almond paste, and with no flour, making it suitable for those allergic to gluten. You could easily play with the flavors here - substitute orange for lemon or lime, maybe using milk chocolate instead, adding actual almonds.. well, I could see this take off in various ways. But there's no need to change anything, because they are quite perfect just like this.

To the back of the picture, you can see a bowl of Banana Pecan Biscotti.

Chocolate Orange Almond Cookies
Makes about 30 very small cookies

250 g almond paste
100 g dark chocolate, fairly finely chopped
the peel of one orange, finely grated
1 egg

This is so simple. Grate the almond paste, and mix well with the egg and the orange peel. Add the chocolate. Spoon out very small cookies on a lined baking sheet. (You can place them fairly close together, they will spread just a little.)

Bake at 175°C for 7-8 minutes, until they are very lightly golden.

Recipe in Swedish:
Småkakor med mandelmassa och apelsin

7 comments:

Brilynn said...

Those cookies look tasty but I like the looks of the biscotti even better! I wouldn't have thought you could put banana in them.

Pia K said...

Och jaa, det var verkligen SÅ goda!:)

Anonymous said...

Yum. I've got a bunch of almond meal in the freezer, so I'm thinking I might try tweaking this recipe a bit, substituting almond meal for almond paste. How much sugar do you suppose I'd need to use, to make up for the binding quality of the sugar in the almond paste?

Anne said...

Shelly - I've never used almond meal for anything, but it should work! Possibly using powdered sugar? Almond paste is generally about 50/50 almonds and sugar, so I'd go with something like that here too. Let me know if it works out! :)

Anonymous said...

Mmmm, almond paste. It makes everything so much better, just like bacon ;-)

Anonymous said...

Anne-

I just tried these tonight. 7 minutes was a good amount of time, though it was a bit difficult to tell if they were really "done." Will they congeal further? They're a bit mushy. I tried the second batch at about 10 minutes, and they seem to be doing alright.

They're nonetheless delicious and dangerously potent. I made a special trip to the local market for the almond paste, but they are quite fabulous. (I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, US.)

Thanks for the great recipe!

Anne said...

Dagmar, that's totally true :)

Chris - they *are* on the soft side, but bake for a few minutes extra if you want them to be crisper. :)