Almond Crunch Cookies

As I've mentioned once, twice, or maybe a dozen times, I am in the process of cleaning up, clearing out, de-cluttering, and donating. Essentially, I'm involved in the proper dispersal of my late husband's vast collection of books. When I say vast collection, I'm talking more than a thousand. In fact, after 5000, I stopped counting. There have been a more than few treasures among all of these.

As I was carting the latest pile upstairs to box up for donation, a small Pillsbury cookbook fell out of the stack, hit the floor, and opened to this page. This is the kind of thing that I call fate. Was the great beyond telling me that I needed to make these cookies? Maybe, maybe not, but I made them anyway.

As much as I love to eat them -- cookies are my favorite dessert -- I'm not a fan of making them, but I do, on occasion; today was one of those occasions. I really hate baking cookies that have to be rolled into balls, and then again in sugar, and then need to be flattened this way and then that with the tines of a fork. What trouble! These cookies, however, are worth the trouble.

 The recipe refers to them as giant cookies, yielding a cookie 4 inches in diameter. I didn’t find this to be the case. The size was perfect, I thought, and rolling them into balls resulted in a rather boring cookie, so after doing this a dozen times, I just decided to plop a glob right from the cookie scoop into a bowl of sugar, roll it around, and place in on the cookie sheet.  Much better! I also did not have wheat flour, so substituted almond meal and it worked out perfectly! Give these a try, they're addicting.

You can see the recipe from the book above, my version is below and available  via the "Print" button at the bottom of this post.

Almond Crunch Cookies
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 large eggs
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup almond meal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 cups coarsely chopped almonds

1 6-ounce package almond brittle baking chips
Sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, blend sugar, powdered sugar, butter, and oil until well mixed. Add almond extract and eggs; mix well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Gradually blend in flour, almond meal, baking soda, salt, and cream of tartar at low speed. By hand, stir in almonds and brickle chips. Chill, if desired. Shape large tablespoonfuls of dough into balls; roll in sugar. Place 5 inches apart on greased cookie sheets; with fork dipped in sugar, flatten in crisscross pattern.

Bake for 12 to 18 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Cool cookies one minute before removing from cookie sheets.

Yield 3-1/2 dozen four-inch cookies.

PRINT RECIPE

This post is linked to: Over the Moon, Dishing It & Digging It, Art of Homemaking, Amaze Me Monday, Busy Mondays, Inspiration Monday, Cooking & Crafting with J&J, Inspire Me Tuesday, Tuesdays At Our Home, Two Cup Tuesday, Share Your Style, Full Plate Thursday, Coffee and Conversation, and Foodie Friday & Everything Else