Welcome to Gaia! ::

First post here? I was typing this recipe for a friend and it struck me as a food I'd imagine a mori-girl taking to a picnic. It's casual, not over-decorated, but extremely delicious with natural flavor. These almond crescents are, no lie, the best cookies I've ever eaten. A couple other people I fed them to agreed, and they were bakers themselves!

Almond Crescents

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but still firm
1 3/4 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 cups blanched whole almonds, ground in a food processor until quite fine

Instructions:
1. Adjust oven racks to upper and lower middle positions. Preheat to 350 degrees. Whisk flour and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.

2. Either by hand or with an electric mixer, cream butter and 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes with mixer set to medium speed. Scrape sides of bowl with rubber spatula. Stir in vanilla and almond extracts.

3. Add ground almonds and flour mixture and mix at low speed until just combined, about 40 seconds.

4. Working with 1 tablespoon of dough each time, roll dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Roll each ball between hands into a rope that measures 3 inches long. Shape ropes into crescents on ungreased cookie sheet spacing them 1 to 1 1/2 inches apart.

5. Bake, reversing position of cookie sheets halfway through baking, until edges of cookies are golden brown, 15-17 minutes. Cool cookies on cookie sheet about 2 minutes before transferring them to cooling rack with wide spatula.

6. When cookies have completely cooled, roll them in remaining 1 cup confectioners sugar until evenly coated.

Oh thank you! Sounds good! surprised