Mama, can I help you pat out the dough for the almond cookies? Uh, no offense, Loulation, but…er…maybe next time.
Well, mama is urging me to give you this EASY PEASY recipe for almond cookies for the holiday or New Year’s because 1. there is no fat or flour or cream or anything fattening in them and 2. they taste divine. Even I, in my own kitty way, sidle into the kitchen when these are baking, and mama give me a crumb or two, num num.
These cookies are attributed to Henri, a talented Frenchman from Lyon, who was featured in Southern Fried French, a great magazine full of sound advice, smashing recipes and information about the French and France and started by Lynn McBride. Mama loves the magazine and plunged right in to these fast and memorable almond treasures! Here is the excerpt from the magazine, which caught mama’s eye:
“Trois ingredients!”, said Henri triumphantly. He flashed a thumb and two fingers, in the French manner. “Trois!” Henri… began tearing open packages of sliced almonds. These he dumped into a bowl. He added a beaten egg and some sugar. Et voila! He spooned them out on a cookie sheet, and 12 minutes later we were sampling cookies.
That said, mama went right ahead to make a batch and then tweak it once to add what she felt would make the cookies even easier and tastier. You will see the original recipe on this link, but to make the cookies faster and easier, mama pressed the dough into a whole sheet and then cut them later. To form each one is time-consuming and the dough sticks to your hands unless you keep your hands moist. So, another tweak. Okay, okay, a third tweak: butter the pan, don’t oil it, but it’s only a teensy bit of butter! Or you can use almond oil. That might be nice. Mama votes for the butter.
Now, here are mama’s tweaks:
400 g/15 ounces of sliced almonds (mama used whole, peeled almonds in another batch that she ‘sliced’ with her food processor because the store was out of pre-sliced ones. They are the ones in the photo below.
HENRI’S TWO-MINUTE COOKIES (tweaked)
16 ounces peeled and sliced almonds
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
Generous pinch of salt and of cinnamon
1 large egg
Heat the oven to 350 F/180 C. If your oven cooks hot, lower the temp 5 degrees.
Okay, put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a fork. This takes about 2 minutes! Butter a baking sheet very well and press the dough into a flat cake, very thin, to the edges of the baking sheet. Make sure the dough is very flat. Sprinkle with raw sugar if you wish, which gives a nice crunch to the outside of the cookie.
Bake for 12 minutes or just until the edges of the flat cake are golden brown. Do not over-bake or the cookies will taste burned. Turn off the oven, open the door and leave the baking sheet in for a few more minutes, which dries out the cookies nicely and gives them a good crunch.
Great for gifts and so, so healthy!!!
I’m waiting around for crumbs to drop when mama serves them…
Have I positioned myself well? Hmmm…
We bet the mom who’s not very good in the kitchen could even make those cookies!
These cookies could be made by and KITTY, and even Marcus.
GREAT positioning, Loulou – I’m going to pick up that pose when I hang out under the table. Mama says she’s going to make them Tuesday for when our neighbors downstairs come over for dinner. Well, I learned from the newsletter – we don’t want to pat the dough – we want to volunteer as tasters!! We are, after all, experts in haute gastronomie, non? Mama giving me that “look”……….later……………..
Mya, you can eat everything in these cookies unless you are allergic to nuts, haha. Nuts to that!!!
Darlink’,
I tried the recipe above! very good and new to Dallas as far as I know(I love a good bakery).
Thank you for being you.
Love,
Sandra
YAY, let me know if you tweak it further. We send love from us three.
Is this a hint ..?
No, no hint. Just really good cookies for Barrie and you for xmas. Sorry you have to make your own….
Ohhh I sooo want to make these but I have to watch sugar….but…I wonder if per portion it is that much sugar?
Caren, it is a drop in the bucket. I think each cookie might have 1/4 teaspoon, if that, but you can make 20 cookies with 1/2 cup sugar only and divide 4 ounces by 20, which gives you abut 1/5 of an ounce of sugar. I would think less than a packet of sugar for coffee in restaurants. And mama uses half that in her espresso.
Ahh ! A glorious addition to the long catalog of Christmas cookies !
When I was a kid, my Mom and I baked beaucoup cookies (my Gramma’s sour cream cookie recipe) cut into shaped like trees, Santa, reindeer, etc and iced them . Now I see a tray of the exact same cookies on sale in the store bakeries for $12 a dozen.
Oh, Mary, mama and her mama and HER mama did the same—mam’s mama’s butter cookies all stamped with designs were famous among her friends. But those Safeway cookies do not hold a candle to homemade!!!