For May 12

I am so behind!  Yuck.  OK, well, even though I am posting this 3 weeks late, we did take pictures of the cookies at the time (see, no green spots anywhere) so I can report, to the best of my memory, on what we did:

Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert
Pleyels, from Nick Malgieri

This was the week of the failed recipe.  On Tuesday night, I made ginger macadamia nut biscotti.   Seven dozen of them.  When we tried them on Wednesday night - at 11:30 p.m.! - we realized that the macadamia nuts had gone bad and that the entire output had to be tossed.  So the almond sables were a late addition based on the fact that I had the needed ingredients (butter and almonds) and that they are quite simple to make (and delicious to boot).  So I made the dough at midnight, and then Andrew sliced and baked them the next day.  As I have said, I love Alice Medrich's sables recipes, and this one is one of my favorites - particularly since it got me out of a tough spot!

I am pretty sure I made the Pleyels before, but I can't find them in a search of the blog, so maybe it was a lot longer ago than I remembered it being.  Anyway, the recipe is at the link, and I encourage you to check it out.  Pleyels are a small, french-pedigree chocolate cake.  Nick Malgieri calls for them to be baked in muffin pans, but I used mini-muffin pans for my purposes.  You have to really watch them in such small pans to make sure they don't dry out too quickly.  These are like little brownie bites, except the chocolate flavor is a bit more refined (these are really exquisite) and the texture is a little bit lighter.  All in all, these are a very nice item.  At some point, I should try them in the full muffin tins; I am sure that they are exceedingly moist when made that way.