Festive Chocolate Easter Cookies Inspired by Maltese Figolli

So it's almost Easter and here in Malta one treat that they like to make is figoli. But today I'll show you how to make my figoli inspired Easter cookies. All you need to do is add your sugar to your flour, the salt and whisk to combine. You'll notice that some of the ingredients are pretty much the same as what you would use when making the Maltese Easter cookies. But anyway back to our cookies. So just add the orange zest to the flour and mix it with the flour, rubbing it through your fingers. So for the next part if you have a food processor you can go ahead and use that. If you don't have one I would suggest that you grate your butter. It should be unsalted butter. And then just dip it into the flour and sugar mixture and give that a good mix until it forms what looks like a shaggy dough. After that we're going to toss the spoon and dig in with our fingers. Well yeah, dig in with our fingers. Not everyone's gonna like this part but try to have fun with it. But you will need to work a bit fast because you don't want the butter melting in your hands. I'm sorry it's extremely windy the past few days. I'm trying so hard to find a day to record but it seems like there's just never a day when it's not so windy. So anyway, whisk the vanilla into the egg yolks and give that a good mix. Then go in with your hands again and this time you want to knead the dough until it pretty much it comes together and there's no patches of flour. It might be quite tough but just keep going with it. It should take about four to five minutes before it comes together, maybe less. Then split the dough into equal weights and wrap them up in cling film and let them rest in the fridge for about an hour. And while the cookie dough chills in the fridge we can move on to making the marzipan. You do this by whisking the icing sugar and the ground almonds. Then make a well in the middle and pour in the egg whites and the almond essence. Make sure it's nicely mixed before wrapping it in cling film and leaving it in the fridge to chill for an hour as well. The noticeable difference between these and the Maltese cookies is how they sandwich the marzipan in between the cookie dough and how thick the cookie is. They also add a thicker amount of marzipan in the middle which quite a few people love. So definitely give making figolia a try if you're into that. And after the dough has chilled for an hour, place it between lightly floured parchment paper and roll to about an eighth of an inch thick. If the dough seems to crack on the sides as you roll, just pinch the areas that are cracked back together and roll over it. It should be fine. It's best to work with one cookie dough at a time. After you finish the first, go on and do the second and then do the same with the marzipan. Roll it between parchment paper. It might be a little bit more sticky than the cookie dough so just add flour as much as you need but not too much. And finally, very carefully, stack the cookie dough over the marzipan and give it a gentle roll just to make sure everything sticks together. Then put some parchment paper on top of the cookie dough and gently flip it over. And now gently peel off the parchment paper before you stack the other cookie dough over the marzipan. Then lightly flour the cookie dough, put the parchment paper on top of it and give it a gentle roll. This is just to make sure that everything sticks together before we do the cutting. Typically the Maltese Easter cookies are shaped using the rabbit, the egg, the sheep, the Madonna and a few others that I can't remember but I'm pretty sure the Maltese will be forgiving should you not have these on hand. Bake the cookies at 170 degrees. Remember to flip the baking tray halfway through and that's it. Your cookies are ready. You can eat them as they are or you can dip them in chocolate. Even though the cookies were not as overly sweet as I thought they would be, I decided to go with the dark chocolate. All you need to do is dip the cookie into the melted chocolate and let the excess drip and then hold up the cookie so the excess chocolate will continue dripping and will form that pattern that you see on my cookies. And that's it. Your Easter cookies inspired by the Maltese figoli are done. So I hope you make them. I hope you come back again and I hope you enjoy the cookies and share them. See you again soon. Bye!