Italian almond cookies with jam

The other day I fancied a bakewell tart but couldn’t be bothered to make the pastry – it doesn’t take that long really, I was just feeling exceptionally lazy! After a quick rifle through the baking cupboard I found a bag of ground almonds and decided to make Italian almond cookies. There are so many recipes, all different. Some say to rest the dough overnight, others just put it straight in the oven. You can whisk the egg whites or blitz everything up in the processor. You can make them with caster sugar or icing sugar (which is why I’ve specified either below) and you can add various flavours. I was feeling a bit bamboozled!

INGREDIENTS

300g ground almonds

300g caster sugar or icing sugar (also known as powdered sugar)

3 egg whites Icing sugar for dusting

Pinch of salt

1.5 teaspoons almond essence (optional)

Raspberry jam

Makes 30 cookies.

Cranberry and Chocolate cookies

When it is rainy and cold outside, a colourful cookie to cheer you up!

Cranberry and Chocolate cookies
Makes 14 cookies

Ingredients

100 grams butter
100 grams light brown muscovado sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
150 grams self-raising flour
100 grams of dried cranberries
100 grams of white chocolate (chopped into small ish pieces)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Easy Butterscotch Salted Caramel Budino

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Easy Shortbread Cookies

"Well obvs new cookie cutters is a great reason to make cookies (even though I was supposed to be starting a diet..again!) so Syd and I made some simple shortbread ones. " [fa icon="fa fa-external-link"]

White Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

"So these cookies. Nobody is tired of chocolate chip cookie variations right? I woke up fancying coconut and white chocolate. Lemon zest would be fantastic in these too but I wasn't fancying that at the time. The result was something that had me itching for my mum to get back from work so I could have one with a cup of tea. It was hard going, waiting for her to walk through the door." [fa icon="fa fa-external-link"]

4 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Almond Butter Cookies

"Think chunks of baked marzipan, but of course you could used any nut butter. I think a hazelnut version would be wonderful. I used less sugar than most of these naturally gluten free cookie recipes call for "

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"recipe for these cookies and decided, as they are Italian, that they would be a perfect entry into my Treat Petite Challenge this month. The theme is Eurovision countries and any petite treat from a participating country is permitted. "

New Method Chocolate Chip Cookies

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"Who doesn't love a cookie ?

These cookies are based on a recipe in River Cottage "Light and Easy", with a few tweaks as I didn't have all the required ingredients as recommended.

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Easter Snickerdoodle Cookies ~ Recipe

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Spiced Pumpkin Cookies

I picked a pumpkin last week and I think I might spend all of October eating it.   I carve a bit off and it still looks almost as big as it was before.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the rest of this household loved pumpkin but at the moment it seems that me and Master Spice are the only ones who like it, and Master Spice only began eating a week ago so I can’t rely on him to eat much.

Although I love pumpkin and would like to make lots of roasted vegetable dishes I think I might be the only one eating them.   My lovely husband was not quite as lovely as normal the other night when he actually refused to eat my delicious pumpkin creation and went and got a pizza out of the freezer.  Well, more for me, although pumpkins are pretty big so that means a lot lot more.

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Treat Petite Round Up January 2015

My goodness! We are one month into 2015 already – where does time go?! January is a bit of a naff month don’t you think? It’s cold, we are all trying to be a bit heathier post-Christmas festivities. It’s still dark in the mornings when you leave for work and dark by the time you get back (well, for me anyway).

Anyway, enough of my grumbles! Treat Petite for this January was all about being a bit healthier like I said above. And you guys did not disappoint – who needs to be bad when being good can be so good?!

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Oatmeal Courgette Cookies Recipe

I have always been a huge lover of courgette (zucchini) bread and also a lover of oatmeal cookies. Today, while the rain poured down and swimming lessons were closed for half term I wondered what it would be like to mix the two together. I am sure this has been done before but I had yet to test it out myself. I was in the mood for a little baking with Missy Moo while Buba was at nursery. Rainy days are always good for that. The added courgette means I can tell myself it’s one of my five a day right?

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'Italian Easter Bread' Cookies

It is visually quite stunning – a plaited wreath of sweetened dough with dyed hard-boiled eggs placed in the wreath, plus some sprinkles.  Very Eastery, not just because of the colours, but of course the eggs – which have all sorts of religious connotations.

I’m not religious, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, but I still like the holiday and it's colours and tastes.

I thought I would try making it this year, but then I mentioned Italian Easter Bread to Disneyboi who baulked at the thought! He’s not a lover of real eggs at all. I say real eggs, as he does like chocolate ones, which set me to thinking.

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Healthier Banana, PB and Chocolate Cookies

I took down my Christmas decorations at the weekend. I used to hate taking them down, everything looking so bare. But now I kind of quite like it. It signifies getting back to a routine and on with New Year sensible eating habits!

As I’ve said in my last post, I’m trying to lose a bit of weight and January is going to be mostly about healthy treats. I decided to give making healthy cookies a bash. So, these were a bit of an experiment, but I think they turned out lovely.

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Nut and Cranberry Biscuits

Some recipes are made after days, weeks even, of  thinking and planning.  You get it into your head you want to try something and you think about the flavours and textures you want to create.  You imagine how it’s going to taste, you buy the ingredients and choose a suitable time to make it – a day when you have the right amount of time the recipe requires, a day when above all, you are prepared.

Other recipes are not planned at all and just forced upon you by circumstances almost beyond your control.  That was the case with these biscuits.  Little Miss Spice demanded to make them.   I tried to distract her with dolls houses, drawing and lego.  I hoped it would work.   On this day, it did not.   She could picture those biscuits.  She knew we had cupboards full of ingredients to make them – butter, sugar, plain flour.   Yes, even a 2 year old knows what goes in biscuits.  She also knew that I was trying to distract her and she was not going to let me have the satisfaction.

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Speculaas Spiced Shortbread Biscuits

That's no joke either. I decided to make shortbread with the little packet of spice magic I picked up after mentioning I was a blogger. I wanted something classical and simple to really show off the spice blend and this seemed the thing over the other options swirling through my head. I was right. Butter and a brown sugar combine in a little elegant treat that will sit comfortably on your saucer edge waiting for the moment when it can melt into submission, releasing it's warming beauty onto your senses.

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Chocolate & hazelnut cookies (video)

Several months ago we shared my brother’s chocolate and pecan nut cookie recipe. It was such a success that we decided to make a video of a similar cookie recipe, this time with chocolate and hazelnuts. This is a great, fun recipe to try out with the kids on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and your reward is you get to eat the finished product :-)

These chocolate and hazelnut cookies are great to have in your cooking repertoire as they’re cheap to make and are always real crowd-pleasers.

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Sprinkle Dipped Viennese Fingers

When Mum said I could bake a batch of biscuits to take with us when we went away last weekend I couldn't resist testing out this idea. I know I shouldn't meddle with a recipe which is perfect as it is, and Viennese biscuits are admired by so many, but I was dying to coat something with as many sprinkles as I could. These biscuits seemed perfect - the sprinkles would hopefully add a spot of the whimsical to an old fashioned but ever pleasant classic.

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