Almond Florentine Cookies (aka The Cookies From HELL)

• ThePhoody

In Dallas, there is a great little cafe called The Black Forest Cafe that sells amazing Almond Florentine cookies. They have been one of our guilty pleasures for the past year, and they are tasty enough to drive 30 minutes from home to pick them up. This weekend we decided to give the recipe a try.

The first attempt yielded giant, chewy, buttery, overly orange flavored discs that could break your teeth if you weren’t careful. However, after tweaking the recipe and burning the hell out of myself, I think I have finally mastered the art of the Florentine Cookie. Most recipes call for orange or lemon zest…while it isn’t a bad flavor, we were attempting to mimic our favorites from the Black Forest Cafe which leave the zest out. The recipe below yields small, delicate, crispy, praline cookies that will put a smile on your face.

SERIOUS WARNING: You are dealing with molten sugar and butter here. My hand has some serious battle wounds from a whisk gone rogue (hence the new name for these cookies). Be very careful when handling the batter. By the string of profanities coming from my mouth as I ran to the kitchen sink to cool my hand, you would have thought Gordon Ramsey was in my kitchen.

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 40 minutes (4 batches at 10 minutes/batch)

Ingredients:

  • 2.5 cups sliced almonds
  • 4 T. Butter
  • 1 cup + 4T heavy cream
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 0.5 cups packed brown sugar
  • 1 t. pure vanilla extract
  • 0.5 cups all-purpose flower
  • Ganache frosting (0.5 cups heavy cream + 2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips)
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Place almonds on baking sheet and bake until slightly browned and aromatic.
3. In sauce pan over medium-high heat, add white and brown sugar, heavy cream, butter and vanilla.

The pot

4. Stir until butter is melted and sugar is desolated.
5. When pan starts to boil, add toasted almonds, and whisk the flour into the mixture.
6. Allow mixture to boil while continuously stirring for two minutes until it starts to thicken. (This is where the incident happened)
7. Removed from heat and let cool for 30 minutes.
8. Mixture should start to thicken into a sticky batter. With a tablespoon measuring spoon, scoop a ball of batter and use a second small spoon to position the ball on a parchment lined baking sheet. In the picture below, they were still a little more molten than they should have been…let the batter cool a little longer if they look like this.

Before baking

9. Bake one sheet at a time. I was able to get 6 cookies per sheet. Bake each for 10 minutes, then literally sit at the oven watching until they get a nice caramel brown color around the edges. The more browned, the better as this produces a crispier cookie, but be careful…they can easily burn even after removing them from the oven.

10. You will probably notice the cookies are running together. DON’T PANIC! We will fix this. Once they are done cooking, take a small spatula covered with a piece of parchment as in the picture below, and gently scrape the stray carmel back into a nice circle shape. You will need to move fast after taking the pan out of the oven. The hotter the cookies are, the easier they are to reshape. As soon as they start cooling they get SUPER sticky and will even stick to the parchment. The good news is even if they aren’t shaped perfectly, they will still taste great!

Reshaping The Cookies

11. Allow to cool completely.

12. In a double boiler (or a metal mixing bowl over a pot of boiling water as below) add chocolate and cream, and melt until you have a smooth ganache.

Ganache

13. Dip cooled cookies into ganache and spread evenly on top of cookie. You can also make sandwiches with the ganache if you so choose. Place on parchment and allow to cool completely. Store in refrigrator separated by parchment paper.

14. Serve with your favorite Irish coffee or hot chocolate.

The Cookies From Hell

– The Phoody

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