As the name implies, the florentine cookie’s origins are from Florence in Italy. They are very thin cookies with a slightly sweet flavour and usually have cherries or orange hints in them. They are tasty and easy to make even with kids!
You need
- 145g blanched almond
- dash vanilla extract
- zest from half an orange or 2tbps candied orange peel
- 130g sugar
- 70g butter
- 2tbsp corn syrup
- 2tbsp heavy cream(35%)
- 33g flour
- (optional) chocolate
Instructions
- In a food processor chop the almond finely(small pieces) but you don’t want to make flour out of it. Transfer into a mixing bowl and combine with zest and flour. Reserve.
- In a pot over medium heat, put the butter, once mostly melted add the cream, corn syrup, vanilla and sugar, stir it and bring to boil. Let it cook until all the sugar is dissolved and pour into your dry almond mix. Give it a good stir and let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes), if it’s still too warm you won’t be able to manipulate it.
- Preheat your oven at 325F.
- We now need to shape our cookies, each one is about 1tsp of dough. I use a normal teaspoon but if you have one of those tiny ice cream/melon scoopers those work great. Form into a ball and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper; they will not stay in the ball shape for long and will immediately start to deflate, that’s is normal. If the mix is too liquid, it’s probably still too warm. Repeat for another 5 balls. Make sure to spread them on the baking tray as they will meltdown so you don’t want them to touch each other. Bake for about 10 minutes until a nice golden brown colour ( if they are undercooked they will not be crisp). Leave them a minute on the baking tray then transfer them to a cooling rack.
- Since it takes 10 minutes to bake, I like to continue making balls and prepare another baking tray with another 6 cookies so I just swap them out. Repeat until you are out of dough.
- As a finishing touch, one can drizzle chocolate on top but I don’t like this as it looks botched. Instead, I prefer to temper (howto here) some chocolate and dip the bottom of the cookies in it.
- Store in an airtight container or they will get mushy