Honesty is the best policy, or at least this is the poor logic fed to me by adults during my youth. Poor because it is cleverly leverages guilt to make you divulge information which makes you look stupid. Well I am neither one to abandon my ethical heritage, or to miss an opportunity to look stupid (a point of endless amusement to my best friend), so here is the skinny in the latte. I was supposed to have selected our first recipe two days ago. Ummmm...didn't happen. So this morning I was left scrambling to find a recipe which had few enough ingredients and easy enough that my brother would actually go along with it. Too much searching left me with florentines (almond lace cookies).
The recipe is not terribly long or difficult, so after a trip to Meijer's, where it was take-too-damn-long-with-your-23-children-and-through-the-check-out-day it was time to bake.
Make flour out of almonds. Why? Because normal flour is just SO not gourmand enough.
Gratuitous bubbly stuff pic!
The nearly finished project. Bubbly and browned.
Missing: six chocolate drizzled florentines. Last known location: dangerously close to my mouth.
The recipe:
Florentines (Almond Lace Cookies) Ingredients
1 3/4 cups sliced, blanched almonds (about 5 ounces)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Finely grated zest of 1 orange (about 2 tablespoons)
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Alteration: melted Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips as bottom coating, Ghiradelli white chocolate ganache drizzle.
- Preheat oven to 350
- Process almonds until meal consistency and combine with salt and flour.
- In a small saucepan over medium heat bring sugar, cream, butter, and corn syrup to a boil.
- Mix wet & dry ingredients and allow to cool.
- Drop by the tablespoon onto a lined cookie sheet 3-4" apart
- Cook 11 - 12 minutes, turning halfway through.
True to my financial limitations I relied upon aluminum foil as a liner which was clearly NOT condoned by the recipe author. My powers of active rationalizing are considerable and so I went forward with the madness. My first batch was ruined because I allowed to go approximately 90 seconds too long. The second batch, which I turned at 6 minutes and then eye-balled them to golden brown bliss.
The alteration was cobbled together with ingredients available and a microwave, so simplicity reigned but did not sap flavor.
