Almond Coffee Crisps

On Saturday afternoon, when I pulled the first batch of this week’s Baking Bible recipe out of the oven, I thought, “That can’t be right.”  While the first batch cooled, so that I could shape the next batch, out of habit, I grabbed my phone to browse Facebook, while I waited. Oh, look! Somebody’s posted in the “Rose’s Alpha Bakers” FB group. I tap it, read the post, and think, “Huh, at least I’m not alone!”  The cookies, according to the recipe, are supposed to be light, crisp, and airy. Mine were… crisp, flat, and full of holes.

The recipe comes together super easily. First you toast your almonds, then grind them with the flour, espresso powder, salt, and baking powder. Dump that out of the food processor and into a bowl, then use the food processor to cream the butter into the sugar, a bit at a time, along with the vanilla.

I kind of hate my food processor, because it doesn’t seem to matter just how long I let it go, nor how much scraping I do, I never get particularly satisfying results. Carrying on, you add the flour to the butter/sugar, then kneed the dough a bit to make sure the butter’s all evenly incorporated, and the dough is done.

This dough didn’t really look much like a cookie dough to me, and it felt too wet to make it possible to roll & shape, but I knew I had measured everything correctly, and that I hadn’t missed any ingredients, so I charged on. Once the dough is together, you’re supposed to take teaspoon sized lumps, roll them into a ball, then flatten them to about 1/4″ thick.

So, there’s no hiding this, at this point. Sorry, Rose! I messed up! The recipe doesn’t call for baking these cookies on a Silpat, but that’s the only way I ever bake cookies, anymore. I’ll have to try these again sometime, without the Silpat – that sounded like one potential culprit in the FB thread.  Then again, Faithy‘s crisps were half flat & holey, and half puffier. Mendy seems to have had good success with consistently puffier almond coffee crisps.  But, the brave soul who posted the first question about them had them turn out just like mine, and it doesn’t look like he used a Silpat, either. For my third pan, I tried just barely flattening the cookies, and still had an identical result.  Oh, well.  They sure are tasty, and I like the crunchy texture.