Good Housekeeping, APRIL 2006

GOOD FOOD

In my office, we stop for tea at the drop of a hat. Any excuse will do – birthdays, anniversaries, Thursdays… We always do it properly, and have a tablecloth, cakes on cake stands and china cups and saucers. Someone will come over from our Honeybuns bakery with a new product, and we’ll have a cup of tea and do a taste test. Of all the biscuits we make, these are my favourite. They evolved from a recipe passed down by my grandmother, who spent time in Italy. I call them Dorset amaretti!

Text version:

Emma Goss-Custard’s Almond Cookies

Hands-on time: 15min; Cooking time: 20min; makes 24 biscuits

• 4 medium egg whites
• 500g (1lb 2oz) granulated sugar
• 200g (7oz) ground almonds
• 200g (7oz) ground hazelnuts
• Zest of 2 lemons
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• 75g (3oz) stem ginger in syrup, drained and roughly chopped
• 1 tsp lemon oil (Boyajian is a good one, £10.50 from Lakeland Ltd) or lemon juice
• Golden icing sugar, sifted, to dust
• 24 natural glacé cherries

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) mark 4. Link two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment. Put the egg whites in a large bowl and whisk until they form stiff peaks. Add the sugar, ground nuts, lemon zest, ground and stem ginger and lemon oil or juice and mix with a wooden spoon to form a sticky dough.
• Break off pieces of dough an droll into 24 golf-ball-sized balls. Pit the icing sugar in a bowl and gently drop in the dough balls, one at a time. Roll each one around until evenly coated. Put the balls, spaced well apart, on to the prepared baking sheets. Flatten each ball out with a palette knife.
• Pop a glacé cherry in the centre of each biscuit, then bake for 20min. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack. The cookies should be firm but not hard to the touch, and chewy when cold.
• 180cals, 8g fat (of which 1g saturates), 28g carbs per cookie

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