Florentine Cookies
A favorite Christmas treat
As soon as our latest Christmas baking book freshly arrived from the printer, Thomas was already sitting on the sofa bookmarking the recipes that he “would like to eat again”. His absolute favorites? The Florentine cookies. When I recently baked Florentine cookies for our retreat, I had to fill a small box just for him to avoid food envy. This great enthusiasm for sweets is – between us – rather unusual for my husband. If you let him choose between a savory and a sweet snack, he would always choose the savory one. That’s why he’s my best test person when creating sweet recipes. Where other people roll their eyes with pleasure when they bite into a biscuit, my husband is still unimpressed. It needs a very special delicacy for him to appreciate.
The Florentine cookie is one of our favorite Christmas treats and should ideally always be ready to hand in the biscuit tin. At the weekend I’ll take care of the supplies. While baking, I will ask myself why I wrote in the recipe that the cookies should keep for 3 weeks. In our house they never last that long ;-).
Would you like to find out more about how the book was created and take a look behind the scenes? Then read on here.
FLORENTINE
Ingredients
- 120 g flaked almonds
- 60 g ground almonds
- 30 g tapioca starch
- 1 organic orange grated zest
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 30 g dried cranberries roughly chopped
- 50 g virgin coconut oil
- 4 tsp maple syrup grade A or C
- 50 g coconut blossom sugar
- 50 g dark chocolate
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C top and bottom heat.
- In a bowl, mix the flaked almonds, ground almonds, tapioca starch, orange zest, salt and chopped cranberries together.
- In a small saucepan, heat coconut oil, maple syrup, and coconut blossom sugar until mixture starts bubbling. Reduce the heat and simmer for 2 minutes while stirring. Add to the other ingredients in the bowl, mix well and process immediately, as the mixture will harden when it cools.
- Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Take out portions the size of a 3/4 tablespoon, shape into balls with your slightly moistened hands, place on the baking sheet, press flat and shape into a round shape.
- Bake for 7–8 minutes on the middle rack, until the biscuits are lightly browned. The dough is now still soft, but becomes harder as it cools down. Let the biscuits cool completely.
- Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Using a brush, brush the bottom of each Florentine with chocolate. Place the chocolate side up on baking paper and allow to harden.
- Store in an airtight container in a cool room or in the refrigerator. When they come out of the fridge, they'll be a little harder and crispy. At room temperature they are softer and "chewy" (I always miss a German word for that).