HTBAA

Amaretti (italian almond macaroons)

These italian cookies are extra sweet and soft, and empirically loved by everyone. Their strong almond taste would go nicely with a cup of tea or coffee. Most importantly, you cannot fail this recipe and it requires only basic ingredients without tools.

This recipe is adapted from here with only one tweak: I'm replacing coffee with almond and vanilla extract.

1. Ingredients

This recipe has only 3 basic ingredients. For 24 amarettis, you'd need:

250g of almond flour
180g of powdered sugar
2 egg whites

That's basically marzipan, and would already work fine on its own. For added aroma, you can add:

1 tbsp of vanilla extract
1 tbsp of almond extract

2. Mix dry ingredients

Pour the almond flour in a large bowl. I find it hard to sift so I tolerate some lumps at this stage.

Next, sift and add the powdered sugar.

Mix the two until you obtain a uniform, lump-free powder. You can use your bare hands if you don't have a tool.

3. Mix wet ingredients

Separate the egg whites into a small bowl.

Then add the vanilla and almond extracts:

Mix until uniform without whipping the egg whites.

4. Combine ingredients

Add the wet ingredients in the larger bowl all at once, and mix with a tool or bare hands until you don't feel any lumps.

After working the dough for a while, you should be able to form a ball. You can add some sugar if it's too sticky to work with.
Cover the bowl with plastic film and put in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

5. Shape the amarettis

The cooled dough should now be easier to shape. For all of the next steps, don't hesitate to use powdered sugar as flour: cover your workspace and dough with it to prevent it from sticking. Now is also a good time for pre-heating the oven at 350°F (180°C).

You can use a knife to quickly separate the dough. If the knife is sticky, just add more sugar.

24 is a nice number, its prime factorization is 3 * 2^3. I first split the dough in 3 parts and roll them with my hands:

Then I just have to cut each of these in 8. As this is a power of two, I can just cut them in half three times in a row, recursively.

Take one piece and roll it into a ball, it doesn't have to be perfect.

In a bowl, pour some more powdered sugar and roll the ball until fully covered. You can shake some of the excess sugar off.

Repeat for all and place onto a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

6. Baking

Place in the oven at 350°F (180°C) for 15 to 20 minutes. If your oven heats unevenly, you can flip the orientation of the sheet around the middle of the baking time.

Around the 10 minutes mark, cracks should start forming. Keep an eye on the oven, you can stop baking as soon as some of them start to get golden brown.

Good job. Let the amarettis cool for at least 30 minutes then store in a box to preserve their softness.