Chinese Almond Cookies

Ingredients

Dough

  • 36g almond flour
  • 60g all-purpose flour
  • ¼ teaspoon table salt
  • 3/16 teaspoon baking soda
  • 56g unsalted butter room temperature
  • 49g granulated sugar
  • ½ egg save the rest for egg wash
  • ½ teaspoon almond extract

Topping

  • ½ large egg beaten with ½ tablespoon water for egg wash
  • 9 whole almonds or small handful of slivered or chopped almonds

Instructions

Make the dough

  1. Toast the almond flour: heat a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the almond flour and stir constantly until it turns golden and becomes fragrant, 4-6 minutes. Remove it from the heat and immediately scrape the toasted almond flour into a bowl to prevent it from burning.
  2. To the bowl with the toasted almond flour, add the all-purpose flour, salt, and baking soda. Whisk together until well combined. Set aside.
  3. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar on low speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg and almond extract until combined. The butter may look slightly curdled at this stage; that is fine.
  4. Add the dry ingredients and stir until it forms a soft, sticky dough.
  5. Scoop the dough (I use a small cookie scoop) into none balls of approximately 25g each. Place on a plate, cover well with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least a few hours, or overnight.

Bake the cookies

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a quarter-sheet with a double layer of parchment.
  2. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, place the balls on the pan, and flatten each ball to a disk of about 1½ - 1¾”. Smooth edges as much as possible.
  3. Lightly brush each disk with egg wash and press an almond into the center of each (or arrange slivered or chopped walnuts over the surface). If dough has warmed up significantly, place pan into refrigerator for 5 minutes for the dough to firm up.
  4. Bake 14-15 minutes until tops turn a light golden brown color.
  5. Remove from the oven and let cookies cool on the pan for about 5 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.

Notes

9 February 2024: I made these today following the recipe above, which is my modification of a similar recipe from King Arthur Baking. My recipe is half of the original since I don’t usually need 18 cookies at one time. I doubled the almond extract based on comments made on the original recipe. Although several comments indicated that these cookies were not sweet enough, they were plenty sweet for us. (I would even consider reducing the sugar, if it would not affect the texture which we thought was excellent.) I baked them 14 minutes on rack 3. Could probably go to 15 minutes to make them a bit crispier, but they were excellent at 14 minutes as well.