These Almond Cookies (Pain d'Amandes) are the best cookies I ever had. My grandmother Marie Noel would bake them for us, I believe she got the recipe from her own Grandmother Mary Mc Grath, our Irish ancestor.
The real serious secret is to find the right BUTTER. Land'o'Lake stuff won't do the trick, find some organic or farm butter, it is worth it...
Ingredients :
1 lb 5 oz White flour
1 lb Light brown granulated sugar
10 oz unsalted butter
A few tbsp milk (only if the dough is hard to work.).
1tbsp baking soda
Several Almonds with their brow skin slightly broken
Procedure :
Mix all ingredients but the almonds in a big bowl. Work hard to get a very homogeneous dough, then add the almonds
Make sausages approximately 1 ½” in diameter
Put them to cool down and rest in the fridge (not in the freezer)
Let them stand them all night.
The next day preheat the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 Celsius)
Get one sausage out of the fridge and slice it in slices approximately 3/16 to ¼ ” thick.
It is important to leave the sausages in the fridge until right before you are ready to slice them – If you get them too early out, they will soften and become difficult to cleanly slice
At the beginning you must count 7 to 8 minutes of baking time, but then a little less.
The secret is to stay in front of the oven to make sure they do not burn (they burn very easily…)
