Almond & Pine Nut Cookies

Another idea from the 12 days of cookies feature I stumbled across. Almond & Pine Nut Cookies. Looked simple enough. Why not? As with most of my holiday cookie production, I doubled the recipe.

First, I got past what I deemed a bit of pretentiousness on the part of the contributor (organic free-range eggs, high-quality vanilla extract, superfine sugar). I use eggs, vanilla and sugar. But that's just me.

Almonds and pine nuts are roasted in a 350° oven for five minutes. A couple handfuls of these are reserved for later. The rest go into a food processor and turned into a coarse powder.

The rest of the ingredients are then added directly. Well, almost all of them. Flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, eggs, baking soda. I think that's it. This gets processed until a pasty dough is formed. This is where I ran into a bit of trouble. Doubling a cookie recipe in a food processor just doesn't work well. Fortunately, the mess was minimal as I transferred everything to a mixing bowl and finished the job with my hand mixer.

Oatmeal is added, and then the reserved nuts, after rough chopping them first.

The dough was absolutely delicious. But it is probably better to form one-inch balls and place them on a cookie sheet. Or use a couple spoons. Do not flatten, even a little, the balls of dough. They bake at 350° for 10 minutes. Let them rest on the cookie sheet for a couple minutes after coming out of the oven. They are very soft and delicate, but firm up quickly.

There is an almost savory flavor to these cookies, as a counterbalance to the sweetness of the sugar. Yes. Plain old sugar. They are now officially admitted to my pantheon of holiday cookies, and will be made every year.

Sorry. I forgot to take a picture.

Bon appétit!