Flo Braker's Pain d'amande Cookies, from David Lebovitz
Sensei Kodo Boyd has returned to ZCLA to visit for a few weeks, and in honor of her return I am making one of her favorite recipes (which also happens to be one of Andrew's), the chocolate peppermint squares. While these are a holiday favorite, the chocolate-peppermint combination is hardly reserved for the month of December! Anyway, it has felt a lot like December this week here in Los Angeles, with cold nights and days that have not made it out of the 60s. Brrrrr! I can hear the sympathy from my family back East from here....
The other recipe is a bit of an experiment. These are a very, very crispy almond cookie. You begin by making a batter/dough that you put into a loaf pan and refrigerate until it is very firm. You are then supposed to remove it from the pan and slice it very, very thinly. According to the recipe, it makes 80-90 cookies. Well, it is a 9" loaf pan, and 90 cookies into 9" means 10 per inch. Sadly, I am not as much of a perfectionist as you apparently need to be, since I was not up to slicing 1/10" slices consistently. So we got fewer - probably around 60. But they are tasty! It is worth trying again, and next time I will be prepared.
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Both of these sound awesome, but I remember your ir Andrew making the pepermint squares many years ago, and they were the best!!! What about using a vegetable slicer (forgot what they are really called) to slice the loaf? If you almost freeze it, or make smaller loafs so you can keep some cold while slicing one, it might work!
ReplyDeleteAnd you will get no sympathy from your east coast family, except to say we started the week off at 90!!
Love, Phyllis