This year's most baked cookie — Florentines
December 24th, 2015

How’s the cookie situation in your house, this very Christmas-y morning? Are cookies and gingerbreads still piling up high on decorative plates? Or have  certain types  of cookies already  vanished into belly nirvana?

florentinecookies

Somehow we manage to crown a  new favorite Christmas cookie each year — this time around  it was the lacy Florentine Cookie, the one I perfected to my liking some years ago. I roughly baked 20 trays, which  appears to be  a  rather impressive number — but given their size, is actually not that much, since  only 9 cookies will find space on a single tray. Mine have to be quite thin and I am aiming for the perfect combination of crisp and chewy. The chocolate part, on the other hand, has become dispensable, at least for me.

If you are not too keen on candid fruits, I recommend  dried cranberries, which make for a very worthy substitute. Anyways, I wish you some very happy holidays, a wonderful time with your loved ones and a fab start to 2016! See you then!

florentinecookies

Preheat the oven to 190 °C. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Heat  heavy cream, honey, both sugars, salt and butter in a pot and let cook lightly for at least 5 min. Meanwhile chop the dried/candid fruits to your liking.

 Remove the pot from the heat and add the chopped fruits as well as the almonds. Stir until evenly distributed. Now sieve just enough flour over the mixture until it gets rather  dense  — the consistency is perfect, when you can still stir it without breaking the almonds into pieces (a few broken ones are ok).

florentinecookies

Place little piles  of the nut mixture onto the parchment paper using two  teaspoons. Since the dough is spreading extensively during the baking process, I usually go with only 9 cookies per tray. Form the piles round and equally thick —  a wet finger or the  back of an oiled teaspoon works best for this task. This ensures that the florentines turn out evenly  thin and crisp.

Bake for 7-10 minutes or until nicely browned around the edges,  but be careful, it only takes a couple of seconds from golden to burnt! Remove from the oven, slide the parchment paper with the cookies  onto a cold baking tray and let cool completely. Decorate with melted chocolate, if desired. Best eaten within days (keep in an airtight container, separated with layers of parchment or wax paper).

florentinecookies

Florentine Cookies

Recipe source: own creation

Prep time: ~20 min. plus baking 7-10 min.

Ingredients (yields 2-3 baking trays):

100 ml heavy cream

1 tbsp honey

75 g brown sugar (Demerara)

2 tbsp vanilla sugar

1 generous pinch of fine sea salt

25 g butter

40 g dried or candied fruit (cherries, cranberries, orange peel,...)

100-125 g sliced almonds

30-40 g all-purpose flour

for decoration, optional: chocolate

Comments
Vicky

Feb 10th,
2016

Feb 16th,
2016

Jessica Lucas

Feb 18th,
2016