Orange almond cookies

Last month, I mentioned that someone gave me three pounds of blanched sliced almonds. You may be wondering, what did I end up doing with all those almonds? Well, I haven’t done much with them yet, but I’ve been busy collecting recipes to try.

I have made one recipe so far, and it was for these orange almond cookies from the Martha Stewart Living cookbook. I don’t always have a lot of patience when it comes to baking, which is why you don’t often see complicated baked goods on this site. Well, that’s one reason I don’t bake as much as I’d like, the other reason is the caloric implications. These cookies are so simple to prepare, but they look and taste like you spent a lot of time and effort on them.

I did make some changes to the original recipe – I like my almond cookies to taste like almonds, so I omitted the anise and cut the orange zest down to about 1 ½ tablespoons. I also added a drop of almond extract. These cookies have a great chewy texture. The orange and almond flavors work really well together. If you were to use the amount of orange zest in the original recipe, I think it would be quite overpowering, so I’d stick to 1-2 tablespoons. If you’re an almond fan like I am, try this recipe!