Warm your home with the aromas of almonds and anise.
If you know your way around a kitchen, this is a relatively easy recipe. But, it is very time consuming. Plan on spending a few hours in the kitchen during this process.
If you are new to baking, you may want to enlist some experienced help.
I developed this recipe to expand on the basic Italian amaretti macaroon (almond paste cookie) recipe, which traditionally contains only almond paste, sugar, and egg whites. The traditional cookies can be a bit on the hard side, which I wanted to avoid.
Almond-Anise Cookies
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 2 cups sugar
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1 tsp anise extract
- 1 - 8 oz. can almond paste
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 6 cups all-purpose flour
- Powder (confection) sugar for dusting
Recommended Equipment
- large mixing bowl
- electric hand mixer
- several cookie sheet pans
- parchment paper
- electric or battery-operated cookie press
Directions
- Beat eggs in mixing bowl.
- Add milk, sugar, butter, and anise extract to eggs, beat until very frothy.
- Break almond paste into small pieces, add to mixture in small amounts. Beat the mixture well after each addition. Completely mix the almond paste into the mixture. Break up lumps.
- Add the salt and baking powder, mix well.
- Add flour to mixture, about 2 cups at a time.
- Mix thoroughly after each addition.
- The batter should be a thick paste.
- Place batter in the refrigerator for about 30-60 minutes to chill.
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 F.
- Line cookie sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Use the cookie press to place batter on the parchment paper (follow manufacturer instructions for loading and operating the appliance). Use any desired die shapes you choose. You can also use the pastry tip to make freehand shapes. (I made some ring shapes).
- If you do not have a cookie press, you can place small spoonfuls of batter/paste on the parchment.
- Alternately, you can wet your hands with water and form small balls with the batter/paste and place them on the parchment.
- About 12-18 cookies can fit on each pan.
- You may want to bake a test batch of about six (6) cookies.
- Bake two (2) pans at a time.
- Bake for about 10-15 minutes - until bottom (underside) edges turn brown. About half-way through baking, rotate the pans and swap rack positions. The cookies will easily slide off the parchment when done baking.
- The cookies will appear pale in color
- Allow to cool.
- Dust generously (top and bottom of cookies) with powder sugar. I put some powder sugar in a plastic container, added several cookies at a time, covered the container, and gave them a gentle shake to coat with sugar.
- Recipe makes about 10 dozen cookies. The texture is somewhere between a cookie and a cake, due to the frothy and airy batter you prepared earlier in the process.
- The cookies have a slight flavor of almonds and anise that is not over-powering.
This is a newly developed recipe, so it may need some tweaking. Feel free to try it or experiment and leave your comments.
Mike Brandolino - Mike is a Research Biologist and Environmental Professional. His writing topic interests are wide and varied.
