Almond Coffee Crisps

December 22, 2014

Another quick and easy recipe!  I'm going to have to be careful lest I run out of the Q&Es and have to finish up with all homemade fondant recipes (horrors!) or the equivalent.  Quick and easy certainly doesn't mean dull and tasteless, as these lovely little crisps will demonstrate.

I'll confess that even though I know that toasting nuts for 7 minutes (see?  I have been paying attention) makes the finished product taste better, I often don't bother to toast nuts for recipes that don't demand it.  I guess my theory is well, it's your recipe and if you don't care enough to toast the almonds, I don't either.  I believe this is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.  But toasting the almonds is essential with this recipe.  (Also, Woody was standing by my side, and I don't like to think what he'd do if I told him I was going to skip this step).

Besides the almonds, this is it for ingredients--vanilla, butter, sugar, and a mix of flour, espresso powder, baking powder and salt.  If you keep some almonds in the freezer at all times, you'll probably always have the ingredients on hand to mix up these babies.

Processing the almonds with the dry ingredients.  It takes a few minutes of steady processing to get the almonds powder-fine.

Add the butter, and you get this lovely, very malleable dough.

Divide the dough into thirds.  One third should be 126 grams, and I got 125, but even Woody said that was close enough.  It's fun when he gets all reckless like that.

But not so reckless he forgot about the ruler--cookies should be 1 and 3/4 inches wide!

Like this one.

A sheet of cookies after 5 minutes of baking, just before being rotated.  They puff up slightly and smell wonderful.  Do you remember Smell-O-Vision?  Even though it was listed as one of the 100 Worst Ideas of All Time, I wish I had it on my blog so you could smell these cookies baking.

And here they are after having the espresso powder sprinkled over them.  I didn't use a blush brush, since I only have one, and it's used for its intended purpose.  Actually, a silicone brush also worked well.  

The cookies are pictured with a glass of milk, and that's how my two-year-old grandson liked them.  (Despite the espresso, which I thought would be too strong for his little taste buds, he was fond of them, but his favorite is still the Kouign Amann).  But they're delicious with coffee (of course) or tea or probably a glass of sherry.  The espresso and toasted almonds combine to make a rather mysterious flavor (more than one person asked me what kind of spice was in them) which is greater than the sum of this simple cookie's parts.  Rose says tasting these is "like eating coffee-imbued air."  When I read that, I was unconvinced--why would I want to eat air?  But now I see what she means--they are so delicate and airy, and yet rich with butter and almonds.  It's a culinary miracle and a wonderful tribute to "Tubby" Bacon.  This is a fine cookie to add to your Christmas cookie plate or to eat any time of the year.