Sunday, May 13, 2012

Florentines

Today, I wanted to surprise my mum and my grandma with a batch of homemade cookies. Florentines seemed to be just the thing for Mother's Day. They're in fact not that hard to make and they are such a cute present.




Recipe
(slightly adapted from: delicious days

100g heavy cream
1 tbsp honey
75g brown sugar
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
30g butter
40g dried apricots (the original said cranberries)
100-125g slivered almonds
1-2 tbsp chopped pistachios (optional)
1-2 tbsp chooped pecans (my addition)
30-40g all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C . Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Melt heavy cream, honey, sugar, vanilla sugar and butter in a pan, then let simmer gently for at least 5 minutes over medium heat.

Meanwhile finely chop the dried fruit. Remove the hot cream-sugar mix from the stove and stir in the fruits as well as slivered almonds and chopped pistachios. Finally, add as much sieved flour as necessary until the mix gets pretty firm. The almonds should stay mostly whole.

Place little heaps of the mix on the baking trays and leave plenty of space in between - the cookies will spread. Nicky advices that if you prefer your florentines rather soft, leave them as are, the almonds in the center won’t take on much color and will stay chewy, while the edges will caramelize. If you prefer your florentines thin and crisp, you should flatten them carefully with wet fingers or the back of a greased spoon, so they can brown and spread more evenly. I recommend seeing the first tray as a kind of test run, afterwards you can better evaluate, how much the dough spreads and which variation you like best.

Bake on middle level for 8 to 10 minutes or until the cookies have reached the desired golden brown color. Make sure, that they don’t burn around the edges! Remove from the oven and pull the parchment paper onto a cold baking try (don’t burn yourself!), then let cool off completely. Store in an airtight container (use parchment paper or similar to keep the layers separate, otherwise they will stick together easily), they taste best within the first week.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails