Almond espresso cookie
For my variation on the honey sesame biscuit from Vatican City, I combined coffee and almonds These are two ingredients that immediately remind me of breakfast in a bar in Italy. What could be better than standing at the bar drinking a really tasty cappuccino with a sweet roll with crispy almonds on the side. The almonds in the dough of this almond espresso cookie give this cookie a nice crunchy texture and the coffee adds some pizzazz. I really don’t like coffee made from powder, but it does give cakes and cookies a nice strong coffee taste. And because it is never nice to work with a lot of moisture when you bake cookies, I often use it instead of the real thing.
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Almond espresso cookie
for ± 20 cookies
100 g (1 scant stick) butter
100 g (½ cup) dark brown sugar + 1 tbs for sprinkling
1 egg
1 tsp instant espresso powder + a pinch for sprinkling
225 g (1½ cups) flour
40 g (heaped ¼ cup) sliced almonds + extra to decorate
pinch of salt
Beat the butter with the sugar until light and creamy with an electric mixer for ± 5 min.
Beat in the egg and the espresso powder.
Add the flour and the almonds.
Quickly knead into a ball of dough. Press slightly flat and leave to rest in plastic wrap in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll out the dough to ± ½ cm (¼ inch) thick on a lightly floured workspace or between two sheets of parchment paper. Cut into rectangles of ± 2½ x 5 cm (1 x 2 inch).
Place the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Mix 1 pinch of espresso powder with 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar. Sprinkle over the cookies and press some sliced almonds into the dough on one side.
Bake in the middle of the oven for ± 15-20 min. until brown and done.
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