Mini Almond Cookies

What meal is complete without a little something sweet to finish it off? I saw this recipe over at http://blog.lemonpi.net, and I thought I would give them a try. She calls them tv snacks, and they are like miniature quickly cooked shortbreads, with almond meal instead of semolina or whatever you normally use. Damn good. I found they needed a little more butter than her recipe said, 120gm or so instead of 100, but that was probably because I used a coarse almond meal instead of smashing the blanched almonds myself. I also used salty butter, and left out the salt she recommends, as I had no unsalted to hand. All this means my recipe is a lot more streamlined, but I fully intend to make them per the original recipe at some stage, so as to do a comparison.

Little Almond Biscuits

100g almond meal
100g sugar
140g plain flour
100g cold butter, diced (a little more if required to get the texture right)

180 degree oven.

Mix the sugar and almonds together, set aside.

Put the flour in a food processor and, with the motor running, drop in the pieces of cold butter. As soon as all the pieces are in, switch to pulse mode and pulse just until the mixture looks sandy. Add the nut-sugar mixture and pulse until the dough begins to clump.

Tear off cherry sized chunks of dough, roll and flatten a little, do not worry about making them perfectly round or even.. Squash them onto baking trays with a cm or so gap between each one.
They need 10 minutes cooking. You will have split them over 2 trays, given the quantity, so switch the trays in the oven halfway through the cooking process. They should be starting to brown, and will still be soft. Cool for a couple minutes on the trays, and then move to a rack to finish cooling.