green nutty almond cookies

To conclude my almond journey, I present to you this masterpiece, almond cookies topped with brilliant green pistachios. Actually, initially, I made the cookies without the green nuts, hence picture above show no nuts, you see. I call them nude almond cookies, tee hee hee...

But then, I saw sitting on my kitchen bench, the last remaining pistachios from a bag of the stuff that I’ve snacked on for the last two months. Wouldn't you think it an opportune moment to make use of them?

So folks, here it is, two ways of dressing up almond cookies: chunky nude ones and thin biscuity ones topped with pistachios.

Cream the butter and sugar until the they turn soft pale cream colour, fluffy and sugary that you want to eat it just like that.

The first batch I made, I did the mixing manually, using nothing but muscles and a wooden spoon, no hand mixer. It took yonks. My arms were so sore afterwards that I bought myself a hand mixer the next week. The second batch I did after I bought a hand mixer, took me 3 minutes flat to whip up.

Add the sifted all purpose flour, the almond pulp, the vanilla essence and the eggs, free range if you can. Happy chickies, happy tummy. Beat them furiously again, or for you modern gals (and boys), use a hand mixer.

You can separate the cookie mixture into two batches, first half for the nude ones & second half for the pistachio ones.

Now, the fun part. Use two soup spoons to scoop up a bite-size portion of your dough, and form a circular cookie-like shapes. Drop these bite-size portions onto a baking tray lined with baking sheet. Flatten slightly. No need to space them out too much, they don't really expand outwards, just upwards.

For the nude almond cookies, I did chunky portions. So, more tall and fat than short and thin. Can you tell that I ran out of baking sheet? I used greased aluminium foil instead, which did the job fine.

For the pistachio ones, I flattened the cookie dough a lot, until it's short and thin. Coincidentally, that's how people describe me, har har har...

For the pistachio sprinkles, place the pistachios inside a sealable bag. Place the bag on top of a tea towel and proceed to expend all your stress by bashing the nuts with the flat end of your meat mallet until pistachio sprinkles materialised.

Sprinkle the pistachio on top the cookie dough. With your index and middle fingers, press the pistachio sprinkles lightly into the dough.

Bake in the middle rack of a 200°C pre-heated oven for at least 10 minutes. Keep checking until the dough turn into golden brown delicious cookies. My oven took about 20 minutes.

Look at these chunky beauties! I like big butts and I cannot lie.... 




What I like is to eat the cookies warm, straight from the oven. My sister like hers with a bucket of ice cream. How about with a glass of cold almond milk? Anyway you eat them, they are yummm....

I find that the chunky nude ones are quite moist, almost muffin-like in consistency. Crispy on the outside and bread-like on the inside.

This thin pistachio ones are crisp and biscuit-like. But, a word of wisdom. To keep that crispness, don't place them in an air-tight container. These cookies need to breathe. It's perhaps because my almond pulp is not dehydrated, there's quite a bit of moisture content in the cookies.

Green nutty almond cookies
by closet domestic bunny

Makes about 18 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter, room temperature
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups of all purpose flour, sifted
• 2 cups of almond pulp
• 4 tsp vanilla essence
• 4-6 pistachios (optional, but it won't be green nutty almond cookies without it)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200.°C
2. Cream the butter and the sugar.
3. Add the eggs, flour, almond pulp, vanilla essence to the creamed butter. Mix together until well combined.
4. Use two soup spoons to portion the batter and drop onto ungreased baking sheet. Shape anyway you like.
5. Put the pistachios in a sealed bag, place on top of a tea towel and beat with the flat end of your meat mallet until you get a sprinkle consistency. Sprinkle on top of the cookie dough. Press lightly onto the dough.
6. Bake for 10 minutes at least, then keep an eye and bake until golden brown.