Dairy-Free, Dessert, Moderate, Russian

Chocolate Almond Cookies

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These thin, light, chewy (and milk-free) cookies are great with a cup of coffee or some ice cream.

This was one of my favorite cookies growing up. The original recipe is plain rather than chocolate, but I wanted to lessen the amount of flour so I tried replacing it with cocoa powder and found that I like the chocolate version even better. All these years later, this is once again one of my favorite cookies. It’s great with a cup of coffee or some ice cream, while being light enough that you don’t feel like you’ve overdone it with sweets.

Ingredients

*For the original plain almond cookies replace cocoa powder with pastry flour (for 5 tbsp of pastry flour in total).

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Method

Place almonds in a food processor and run for 2-3 minutes until almonds turn into a coarse meal. It is very important that you do not run it so long that they turn into a flour.

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In a big glass bowl, mix lightly beaten egg whites, sugar, and almonds.

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Mix until all ingredients are wet.

Set the bowl over a pot of simmering water, but do not allow the bottom of the bowl to touch the water. Keep stirring the mixture until sugar dissolves completely and the temperature is about 104°, but no higher. (If you don’t have a thermometer, just use your finger. The mixture should never get burning not, just warm.)

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Take the bowl off the heat and let cool to room temperature, mixing every few minutes. Preheat oven to 340°. Prepare baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper and then spraying with cooking spray (these cookies are very sticky).

Once mixture is cooled, add flour and cocoa powder to the mixture by sifting through a sifter or fine meshed strainer.

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Mix well. The result will be something very much like pancake batter.

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Spoon batter onto baking sheet, about 2 tsp per cookie, leaving 2-3 inches of space between each cookie (they spread rather than rise).

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Bake for 7-9 minutes per batch, until edges turn brown. Leave on parchment paper to cool, either on the baking sheet or on a cooling rack.

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Once cool, remove carefully from the parchment paper. It took me several tries to remove the cookies without breaking them so don’t be discouraged if your cookies crumble the first time. You can also mix the broken pieces into some ice cream.

One of the great things about these cookies is that they freeze well–just put parchment paper in between each cookies and put them in a Ziploc bag.

Enjoy with coffee or tea or combine with my Russian ice cream recipe to make ice cream sandwiches (our favorite is to combine the chocolate cookies with the coffee ice cream).

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Приятного аппетита! (Priyatnova appetita! Russian for ‘Bon Appetit!’)

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