My friend Greer joined me one Tuesday and we made some cookies together. It was nice to have company in the kitchen again as Robb has been MIA for a while now.
These cookies came to be made because Greer bought some at an Italian market and totally loved them. She found a recipe and we got to work. They are very simple. You mix almond paste with sugar and egg whites and roll in the nuts- voila!
The only difficulty we observed was that in mixing the almond paste at the start, it was easy to end up with lumps, especially if the paste is a little dry. We pushed it through a sieve when we noticed this. I made the cookies a second time later and with really fresh paste and a thorough mixing, no lumps. I also made a discovery about almond paste. I prefer the smoother texture of the Solo brand paste in a can over the Odense brand in a tube.
(This turns out to be smooth enough so long as the paste is soft, just mix pretty well once you add the whites.)
The cookies end up sort of crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. They are insanely sweet; Kevin loved them!
Fooling with the almond paste made me crave almond croissants and linzer torte type things. Almond is just darn yummy. Maybe more almond-y things will be coming...
-Janet
Cookies
1 cup pine nuts
2 egg whites
3/4 c granulated sugar
1/2 c powdered sugar
12 oz. almond paste
Mix paste until it's pretty creamy. Add sugars and mix in egg whites. Roll in nuts. This made about 15 cookies, you could make them smaller and that might be better- the ratio of less soft middle to more crispy outside would be better. Bake at 375 for 20-25 min., less for smaller cookies.
2 comments:
First off, Love pignoli cookies, but mine never turn out right for some reason. Yours look amazing, so I'm going to pilfer your recipe ;D
Secondly, I responded to you about my 'shameless juice pumping' at my blog, but I'll add it here too, plus more.
I know that’s exactly what they wanted, but I wanted to make it clear that had I not liked the juice, I wouldn’t have done it, so I consider it more of a recommendation than an ad. In other words, it wasn’t done because I felt ‘obligated’ due to the free sample they sent me.
I've been sent two other products to sample (I won't name names, since I'm NOT a food/beverage reviewer), and they were both such colossal pieces of sh - err, you know what, that there was no way I was going to give them even a mention in my blog. If I'm sent a product that's good, I'll pump it up to kingdom come so people will try MY recipe using it. If it sucks, I'd sooner gouge my eye out with a fork than BS people into thinking it's good.
I love pignoli cookies and yours look fantastic!
It is impossible to find true almond paste over here---just marzipan---so I've never made these for myself. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and make my own paste?
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