Amaretti literally means Macaroons in Italian. These cookies are basically crunchy & crispy on the outside and chewy inside. This is one of the healthier cookies that I have come across as the basic ingredients are almonds, sugar and egg whites. Other than being savoured with many kinds of drinks, another frequent use of these cookies is when they are finely ground to be used to make crust of of tarts / pies / cheesecakes. And hey, that is the biiiiig reason I ended up getting to know Amaretti cookies (and eventually making them). I actually went to Wal-mart (my any-time store) at almost 11 pm (that store's closing time) and was looking frantically through the aisles for Mr. Amaretti but there were none :( . I was even going to settle with buying macaroons, but then I wondered - how difficult would it be to make those at home?? Especially when I know that their main ingredient is almonds and I had a jar full of them at home. With a little bit of research I realised that the only other things I would need is sugar & eggs.
So Italian cookies to be baked at home - that was on my agenda!!
What I used :
(Yields about 30 cookies)
- Almond - 3 cups
- Sugar - 1 1/4 cup
- Egg - 3
- Vanilla extract - 1/2 tsp
- Butter - little bit for greasing
How I made them :
- Take 3 cups of almonds.
- Blanch the almonds -
- Pour hot water over the almonds.
- Let them rest for 1-2 minutes.
- Rinse under running cold water.
- Pat the almonds dry.
- Peel off the skins, they will just slip through now.
- Put the almonds in a food processor, grind them into smooth powdery consistency (slightly coarse will also do, just that the almonds should not be identifiable).
- Pour out the ground almond into a big bowl.
- Add the sugar to the bowl and mix well with the almond powder. Use a steel spoon or a spatula to mix them together.
- Add the vanilla extract.
- Break 1 egg at a time, take the yolk out and keep the egg white separate. Do the same to the other 2 eggs.
- Beat the egg whites and add it to the almond-sugar mixture.
- Make sure all the ingredients are lost in each other. (I mean they should be blended into a smooth dough).
- Pre-heat your oven to 300 F.
- Lightly grease the cookie baking sheet with a bit of butter. If you using a parchment paper you will not need this.
- Take out 2 spoons as we need to give shape to the cookies now.
- Take some dough in 1 spoon and scoop it out on the cookie sheet with the help of the other spoon.
- Put the tray(s) in the oven on the lower rack and bake for about 30 minutes till the cookies are golden brown.
- Check the cookies in between - once at 20 minutes and second at 25 minutes, just to make sure they are not over-cooked or lightly burnt.
- Take them out the oven now.
- I let them cool (about 30 minutes at least) and then took them off the baking sheet (with the poking of a knife, they did not slip off right away).
Heard they go well with cream!!!
Note :
You might like:
- Do not go by the picture (6th), but put the trays in the lower rack only. I was trying to see how they turn out if I put them on upper rack (not on maximum heat), but they took more time. So I say put them on lower rack, @ 300 F they should be done in 30 minutes. But definitely check at 20 / 25 minutes.
- Alternate to using almonds are - almond flour or almond paste.
- These cookies don't swell up much so spacing is not so much important. I placed 6 of them in a tray, you could do a little more may be.
- When you are scooping out the dough into the baking sheet, try to not to make too big cookies.
- If you want the cookies to be a bit extra crispy you can leave them inside the heated oven (only after you have switched off the oven in 30 minutes), for an extra 10 minutes and then take them out to cool. This is how they turned out - little darker and definitely crunchier.
- If you like want to adjust the level of sweetness, you may use only 1 cup of sugar (I will surely try it next time).
You might like:
 |
| Chocolate Mousse Tart |
No comments:
Post a Comment