Description
Almond Joy?? don’t just get carried away by the name, these are not chocolate covered candy bars but soft shortbread like cookies made with almond paste. Well, it known or called as Almond bar cookie, the original recipe from Epicurious, but played with the ingredients like a daring baker to suit my taste and convenience.
The original recipe calls for store bought almond paste which I couldn’t find that easily at my store and also found the almond extract very strong or bitter. So had to come up with my own homemade almond paste and choose to go with vanilla extract. Also tried the muffin pan to bake instead of regular tray to make cup like cookies. You may also use a baking tray and cut them like little squares or rectangular bars. This recipe of mine is for a very little quantity, so double if you want to use a baking tray inorder to fit in fully and also to cut like long bars.
Almond Cookies / Almond Bar Cookie / Soft cookie / Shortbread cookie dough / Badam Biscuit
| Ingredients | |
|---|---|
| 40 nos | Almonds |
| ½ cup | Sugar |
| 1 pinch | Salt |
| ½ cup | Unsalted butter (room temperature) |
| 1 tsp | Vanilla extract |
| 1 no | Egg(separated) |
| ½ cup | All purpose flour(+2tbsp flour ) |
| 15 nos | Almonds (slivered) |
Instructions
Blanching Almonds: You can either go with store bought ready made paste or make your own. This is how I made it. Soak those 40 almonds in hot water for 5 minutes to loosen up their skin. With enough patience peel every almonds skin off and dry them on a clean paper towel for one hour. Usually almond paste for marzipan and other cookies are grind ed with egg whites and confectioner sugar to bring it to the right consistency. I grounded mine plain.
Making the dough: Grind blanched almonds to a powder consistency almost like fine bread crumb like texture and keep aside. Separate the egg, (yolk and white), reserve a teaspoon of egg white and use the remaining. Bring unsalted butter to room temperature and cream it using a hand mixer. Then add the sugar and salt to it and beat well (high speed) until creamy and fluffy. Now slowly add the almond powder along with vanilla extract, egg yolk and leftover egg white and beat until well combined. Now add the flour little by little and beat on low speed to combine. It will roll up like a big lump (similar to thick halwa), keep this dough aside.
Preparing to bake: You can either choose a baking tray lined with parchment paper all buttered and spread the dough evenly using a spatula and bake. My measures given above are for a small quantity and all my baking trays were huge. So I decided to use regular muffin pans, lined with parchment, greased them with butter, divided the dough into six equal portions and pressed them gently in each hole. They were about 1/2″ in size, brushed them with reserved egg whites and decorated with some slivered almonds on top. Preheat oven at 350F, place the pan in the middle rack and bake for 25 minutes. You can see the dough will rise and start to get golden on the sides and on top.
Remove and let cool in the pan for some time and then run a knife on the sides of the muffin pan and that will make them slip off the holes. Let cool completely and enjoy.
The baked cookies will have crispy browned crust with very soft, melt in you mouth like… texture on the inside. Store them air-tight box for up to a week. Its all yours, enjoy!
Notes
Yield: 6 cookies (2″ diameter, 1″ thickness)
Egg whites are brushed just to make the slivered almonds stick to the dough and also to brown the top to golden.
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