Almond Macaroons (Pg 91)

In honor of Passover I made a whole bunch of Passover-friendly cookies for some Jewish (and non-Jewish) friends of mine. These were the first of the Passover-friendly cookies.

They might look like they are normal cookies made with flour and everything, but if they had regular flour they wouldn't be Passover-friendly, would they? They are actually made with confectioners' sugar and almond paste. 

I find it very interesting that sugar and almond paste can make a cookie dough. I guess the almond paste on its own is practically a dough. I mean, they use almond paste (or almond meal or almond something) to make marzipan which they sculpt into cute little shapes as cake decorations. I find that so fascinating.

I usually don't feel bad about the food allergies I have, but this is one of the times I wished I wasn't allergic to almonds, because I'm afraid to handle the almond paste too much. If I could handle almond paste more I would really love to experiment with marzipan and other fun things. 

I somehow made these cookies way too big, which I seem to do very often. I promise I read the instructions very carefully over and over again and it very clearly says "drop batter by tablespoons full" which I definitely did. I think maybe they should've been teaspoons full. In the picture in the book, the decorative almonds are pretty much the same size as the cookies themselves, and the almonds on mine are definitely not taking up the space of the whole cookie. Also it made exactly half of the cookies it should've.

I've heard these were very good, but of course, I couldn't taste them. But I do like the way they look, even if they should be smaller. 

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 1 dozen.

Actual: 6 cookies.

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