Semolina Almond Cookies

This was my very first time making these little treats and I am quite pleased with the results.  I’m a huge fan of almond flavor so when I saw these tucked inside of my copy of Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates I marked the page for a fancy event such as Thanksgiving.  They have a unique almost chewy texture from the almond paste and semolina flour.  If nothing else, they smell spectacular while baking and would be worth whipping up just to enjoy their aroma.  The recipe is so simple that it makes the prep work for the black strap molasses cookies look hard.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup almond paste
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1.5 cup semolina flour
• almonds for the topping

All you do is add the ingredients while stirring with your electric mixer until there are no more ingredients to add. Then you hand roll little almond shapes out of the dough, top each cookie with almonds, and pop them in the oven for 15 – 2o minutes. Take them out when they are firm and the bottoms have just started to turn gold.

The recipe recommends that you put a whole almond in the middle of each cookie but I could only find slivers and I think they turned out quite charming.  They really were the prettiest raw cookies I’ve ever made.  I think that they lost a little of their sparkle in the oven – but they taste delightful!