A is for Amaretti Cookies (Jennifer)

Hello from the kitchen!

For my letter A post, I wanted to do something with almonds. Almonds, amaretto.....amaretti! No, amaretto is not related at all to amaretti, but that was my thought process...follow? : ) I love both almonds and amaretto, and most recently, this past November, I traveled with my sister to Boston where I sampled THE most amazing amaretti cookies ever at Mike's Pastry. Oh, my, goodness...if ever you go to Boston, run, don't walk, to Mike's! You'll swoon over Mike's delicious amaretti. Promise.

So, back to the challenge and the recipe. I derived much of my inspiration from this recipe found on smitten kitchen. I also looked to the inside of the packaging for the almond paste I purchased for further inspiration, tips and advice. What follows is the smitten kitchen recipe, though I'll note where I slightly adapted it.

Amaretti Cookies

Makes about two dozen (mine were a bit large)

1 7 ounce tube almond paste (I used Odense brand)
1 cup sugar (the package recipe uses 2/3 cup, so I used just under 1 cup)
1 pinch Kosher salt
2 large egg whites (at room temperature for at least 30 minutes--this is important!)

1. Preheat your oven to 300 F and place racks in the upper and lower thirds of your oven. (My oven is tinsy, so I just made sure one rack was in the middle) Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Pulse almond paste, sugar and salt in a food processor until broken up, then add egg whites and puree until smooth.

3.Transfer batter to pastry bag fitted with a 3/8-inch tip and pipe 3/4-inch rounds (1/3 inch high) about 1-inch apart in pans. (I just used a decorator's piping gun and this also seemed to work just fine.)
4. Bake, rotating and switching position of pans halfway through, until golden and puffed, 15 to 18 minutes. (Because I only used one baking sheet at a time, I did not rotate halfway and they were okay.)
5. Let cookies cool almost completely in their pans. Once cool, they’re much easier to cleanly remove from the parchment. You can make them into sandwich cookies but spreading some jam (I used raspberry) between them or ganache (3 ounces of semi-sweet chips melted with 1 to 2 tablespoons of cream, then left to thicken a bit would be enough to sandwich the whole batch).

Cookies can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for a day or two or frozen up to one month.

Review
These cookies were my kind of delicious and even better the day after I made them. This is a great recipe for anyone looking to calm a sweet tooth. My husband found them too sweet, which can be the case for cookies in which there are only four ingredients and one of them is sugar. You might want to tone down the sugar a little bit. One thing I noticed though is the cookies baked almost hollow on the bottom--odd? The taste was the same, but I thought it was a little funny. Though it would have been great to fill them. I liked them plain, but as smitten kitchen demonstrates you can add jam or a chocolate ganache if you'd like.

On a final note, I was so pleased with my first batch I forgot I had the second batch in the oven. I overcooked them by about 10 minutes at least before I realized they were in there (good thing I remembered before heading off to bed!). Don't worry, though! Besides tasting a little richer in flavor, they were still great and would be perfect to throw in the food processor, add a little butter and press into the bottom of a cheesecake for a crust! Next time... : )

Cheers!
-Jennifer