Very Chocolatey Almond Cookies
I have been frustrated by cookies for a long time. Oil and honey have different chemistry from sugar and butter. The resulting cookies never had the cookie texture. We call cookies biscuits, Down-Under. That name provided the clue I was looking for. ‘The word ‘biscuit’ comes from the Latin for ‘twice baked.’ At last, I solved my problem by double baking the cookies. It makes sense really; honey and oil are very Roman ingredients. So, whip up a batch of these classically inspired treats, make yourself a cup of your favourite coffee and, ede bibe gaude! (Eat, drink and be merry!)
Ingredients:
Half a cup of oil.
Half a cup of honey.
Two tablespoons of vanilla.
Half a cup of cocoa.
One cup of self-raising flour.
Half a cup of cornflakes.
One cup of toasted almonds.
Three tablespoons of cornflour.
Instructions:
Preheat your oven to 220c (that’s 428f for our American friends).
Combine the oil and the honey.
Add the vanilla essence.
Mix in the cocoa powder.
Mix in the nuts and the cornflakes.
Take your cornflour and spoon it in until your batter holds together in a fairly stiff dough. You may not need it all.
Cover a tray with tinfoil or baking paper.
You may spritz the paper or foil with oil if you wish. I didn’t, and it was fine.
Drop tablespoons of the mixture onto your tray. You will get 6 to 8 cookies from this mixture. It depends on what size you like your cookies. I wanted mine to look like those big, delicious cookies they sell in cafes, the kind I can’t eat. I made 7 and pretended I was being self-controlled.
Use a fork to squish your cookies down. Don’t squish them out too thin. Here is how mine looked and they turned out great.
Cook for about 20 minutes until the cookies rise and firm up. Remove them from the oven. Allow them to completely cool down. This will take about an hour. This is necessary if you want your cookies to have that nice cookie ‘snap’ to them. In traditional recipes, the ‘snap’ is created through the butter expanding and contracting. In this recipe, we create the ‘snap’ by toasting the cookies. This will not work if the cookies are still warm.
Turn off your oven. You need your oven to cool down as well.
After the cookies have completely cooled, return them to the oven. Set your oven to 120c (that’s 248f for our American buddies). Leave your cookies in the oven for about 45 minutes. This is not baking, it’s dehydrating and removing the extra moisture that keeps your cookies soft and cakey. After 45 minutes they should have crisped up. They may need slightly more or less time. Just keep an eye on it, you’ll get a feel for it.
Turn off your oven and leave your cookies in the cooling oven. This will finish the drying process.
They will taste great warm but, in order to have the cookie texture they have to cool down completely.
The ‘snap’ will still be a softer ‘snap’ than a traditional sugar/butter recipe will produce, but it will snap and it will be delicious.
Tips
You can use any nuts you desire for this recipe. Walnuts will be especially delicious. If you use Brazil nuts, I recommend roughly chopping them until they are about the size of almonds. For best results, use toasted nuts.
Covering your tray with foil or baking paper is essential. These are delicate cookies. I do not recommend relying solely on a spritz of oil and a dust of flour to remove them from the tray at the end.
