ITALIAN ALMOND COOKIES | Holiday Baking Favourite!

Almond flavoured cookies dotted with sun-dried cherry bits, rolled in sliced almonds, baked golden brown. Perfect for your holiday dessert plates. Enjoy these festive Italian almond cookies. These lovely homemade cookies got us at the first bite but it's not just because they're scrumptious looking. They're also incredibly flavourful. We're talking about almond marzipan doughs throughout. Now do not delay. Holidays are fast approaching. Here's how to make them. Oven rack in the middle position. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Next, the recipe is going to call for half a cup of sun-dried cherries. We need to finely chop them. Let's do that now. A little bit later in the recipe we're going to be dipping the cookies in egg whites and then rolling them in almond slices. Let's get that ready. So, spill one and a half cups of sliced almonds into a bowl. We're going to separate one egg. The egg is at room temperature. Whisk that egg white until foamy. Place the bowls of almonds and foamy egg whites to the side. Now we're going to work on the cookie dough. Medium-sized bowl. We have two cups of ground almonds. Half a cup of superfine granulated sugar. Add about an eighth of a teaspoon of kosher salt. Grab a microplane lemon zest. You need two teaspoons of lemon zest for the recipe. Let's add those chopped sun-dried cherries. You can toss to combine but I like to wash my hands and rub the mixture to make sure all of those little cherry bits are broken up. Then set that mixture to the side. Now grab another bowl. Have a hand mixer at the ready. Egg whites, this time from two eggs, also at room temperature. We're going to also add three or four drops of pure almond extract. And then maybe two teaspoons of honey. We're going to beat this mixture on high until the egg whites form soft peaks. Next step, we bring the cookie dough together. Gently fold the egg whites into the almond mixture. I like to go all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. Go up, make sure everything is completely incorporated. Now we're going to shape, dip, coat with almonds. Watch. Pinch off a tiny bit of the cookie dough. We're going to shape it into a small ball, about one inch big. Don't press too firmly though. You want it kind of loose. Then we're going to dip it into the egg wash and then over to the sliced almonds. We're going to try to coat those little balls with the almonds. Then they go over to the baking sheet. Let me show you again. We're going to take a tiny bit of the dough. Nice and gently forming it into a ball. And then dip it into the egg whites. Then over to the sliced almonds. Then over to the baking sheet. Your total yield is 24 cookies. Yep, that's 12 per tray. Now we're going to transfer the baking sheets to the oven. I do one tray at a time just to keep a nice even temperature within. Transfer to the oven. We have a 15 minute bake time. The cookies will be beautiful and golden. A gorgeous fragrance coming off them as well. Again, every oven is different. So just watch closely to avoid overt browning. Now when they're done, we're going to let them cool completely. And how about a gorgeous dusting of icing sugar. And then over to a beautiful presentation plate or platter. Absolutely beautiful. Super pretty, fabulously festive. Full recipe is up at www.weekendatthecottage.com When you're visiting our website, please subscribe to it. Look for this video on our dedicated YouTube channel. You can subscribe to it as well. And then when holiday cookies are this beautiful, take a photo of them and post them using hashtag Weekend at the Cottage on your favourite socials like Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. Incredibile Italian Almond Cookies. Okay, before my final farewell, I just want to open one of these cookies to show you the inside. It is just so soft-centred. But the inside has those beautiful little tiny sour cherry bits. And oh, it smells like marzipan and it tastes fantastic. And you are going to love it. Buon Natale. Happy Holidays everybody. Until next time. Oh my gosh, I love these cookies. So beautiful.