Russian almond cookies
Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, nutty and uniquely delicious, these Russian almond cookies were so popular during the Soviet era and are now hard to find in Russian bakeries. You can make them yourself using this recipe. It's very easy and requires only four ingredients.
Servings 20 cookies
Ingredients
- 150 g almonds untreated (not roasted and not peeled)
- 120 g egg whites (egg whites of about 4 eggs size M)
- 300 g sugar
- 40 g flour
Instructions
- Grind almonds finely and mix them with sugar.
- Add egg whites and mix until homogeneous.
- Heat the almond mixture in a bain-marie to warm (about 45 °C), stirring constantly, and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved. (Follow my tips and tricks for this here at the top of the post.) Then let it cool to room temperature.
- Add flour and mix briefly to form a thick batter.
- Using a piping bag and a round nozzle or a tablespoon, pipe round cookies from the almond paste onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake them in a preheated oven at 150 °C top and bottom heat for about 20 minutes. Let them cool on the baking paper on which they were baked.
Notes
- Use untreated (not roasted and not peeled) almonds. You can either buy whole almonds for this and then grind them yourself, or buy unblanched and unpeeled ground almonds.
- Weigh all the ingredients accurately.
- Prepare the water bath so that the mixing bowl with the almond mixture completely covers the saucepan with the boiling water (as if it were the lid suitable for it), so that no steam gets into the mixture. The mixing bowl must not touch the water in the saucepan.
- Heat the almond mixture only to warm (about 45 °C), not to hot, and let it cool to room temperature before adding flour.
- The sugar must be completely dissolved in the warm almond paste before adding flour. You can check this by rubbing a small amount of the mixture between two fingers. If you no longer feel any crystals, the sugar has dissolved.
- Do not stir the almond paste too long after adding flour, but only briefly until it reaches a homogeneous consistency.
- The oven temperature when baking the cookies should be around 150 °C - 160 °C and should not exceed 170 °C.
- The specified baking time may vary depending on the size of the cookies. The almond cookies are ready when they have a light golden brown color.
- After baking, let the cookies with almonds cool completely on the baking paper on which they were baked, and only then remove them from the baking paper. Otherwise, they might stick to it.
- Note the detailed tips and tricks for making the Russian almond cookies at the top of the post.