I went on a bit of a search for something that made use of almonds, seeing as I've got a bag of almond meal, and I was waiting a little longer before I go and make what I normally make that involves almond meal, and came upon something that wanted finely chopped almonds. So I went a bit substitution mad, and swapped almond meal in, tweaked the spice mix to include other things like cardamom, and fennel, and black pepper, which seem to be commonly found among chai spices (seeing as I also didn't have allspice), and hoped for the best. They're a crumbly sort of cookie, not soft and chewy, or crisp and shattery. One batch doesn't make that many, despite my attempts to shrink the original instructions to make tablespoonful-sized balls by going with teaspoonfuls instead (except I used the digital scales to try for a consistent size... I got good at estimating what 10g of cookie dough looked like!).
Chai-Spiced Almond Cookies
Adapted from recipe at epicurious.com
Preheat oven to 175°C. ***
Cream butter with icing sugar, extracts, and spices. Add flour, beat to combine, then incorporate almond meal. At this point I put the dough in a bowl and let it have some time in the fridge for the morning.
Roll into teaspoonful-sized balls****. I decided to flash-freeze the 34 balls of dough, and bake from cold*****.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until the bases are lightly golden. Leave to cool down for a little bit - about 5 minutes, then roll in icing sugar. Once the cookies have cooled completely, give them another roll in icing sugar.
X gives his seal of approval!
* I used ... 8 cardamom pods, 6 black peppercorns, some ground fennel, some ground ginger, some ground cinnamon, and some grated nutmeg. I don't know if this ended up being exactly 2 teaspoons, but it looked ok?
** Original recipe called for 3/4 cup finely chopped toasted almonds, which would give a different texture
*** If you're staggering the steps like I ended up doing, probably better not to leave the oven on all day!
**** I am probably crazy, but I weighed each doughball at 10g. Yay for digital scales!
***** This is mostly because X woke up from his middle of the day nap more than anything by actual design...
Adapted from recipe at epicurious.com
- 110g butter, softened
- 50g icing sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 teaspoons spice mix *
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 135g (1 cup) plain flour
- 75g (3/4 cup) almond meal **
- Extra icing sugar for rolling baked cookies in (about 150g)
Preheat oven to 175°C. ***
Cream butter with icing sugar, extracts, and spices. Add flour, beat to combine, then incorporate almond meal. At this point I put the dough in a bowl and let it have some time in the fridge for the morning.
Roll into teaspoonful-sized balls****. I decided to flash-freeze the 34 balls of dough, and bake from cold*****.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until the bases are lightly golden. Leave to cool down for a little bit - about 5 minutes, then roll in icing sugar. Once the cookies have cooled completely, give them another roll in icing sugar.
X gives his seal of approval!
* I used ... 8 cardamom pods, 6 black peppercorns, some ground fennel, some ground ginger, some ground cinnamon, and some grated nutmeg. I don't know if this ended up being exactly 2 teaspoons, but it looked ok?
** Original recipe called for 3/4 cup finely chopped toasted almonds, which would give a different texture
*** If you're staggering the steps like I ended up doing, probably better not to leave the oven on all day!
**** I am probably crazy, but I weighed each doughball at 10g. Yay for digital scales!
***** This is mostly because X woke up from his middle of the day nap more than anything by actual design...
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