These chocolatey Italian biscuits are traditionally very crunchy on the outside and chewy and a bit marzipany in the middle. They are really easy to make and are gluten and dairy free. I serve them with coffee at the end of a meal instead of making a dessert, or after dessert. They are dense dark and rich and you only need a couple.
Recipe
Makes 18
Ingredients
2 cups ground almonds
2 egg whites
1 cup of golden caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
1 pinch of salt
20g of unsweetened cocoa
A small bowl of icing sugar
How:
Preheat the oven to 180c/350f and prepare a largish baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone sheet.
In a large bowl, mix the caster sugar, salt, cocoa and almonds till thoroughly mixed together.
In another big bowl bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then stir in the almond extract and the vanilla extract.
Tip the dry ingredients into the whisked egg whites and mix with a wooden spoon till you start to get a dough. Tip it out onto a board and knead a tiny bit till it firms up. Take roughly a tablespoon of the dough and roll it into a ball between your palms, then gently roll it in the icing sugar till coated all over then place on the baking tray. Repeat with the rest of the mixture leaving a little gap between them on the tray for expansion during baking.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes, oven temperatures vary, and depending on how crunchy you like them, the longer you bake them the crunchier they get, place on a cooling rack. Best eaten the same day or store in an airtight container.
I shop at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury’s
Tesco
Lidl
This looks fantastic. I’ve been thinking about dairy free and gluten free. And I’m a vegetarian, so that’s always my first consideration. I’m not going to make something that I can’t eat! They’re probably not the best thing for my diabetes, however. (I just won’t tell anyone.)
You say, ‘best eaten the same day or stored in an airtight container’.
Is there any noticeable difference between eating the same day and eating, say, a day later if they have been stored in an airtight container? And if there is a difference, what is it?
Thanks. They are particularly delicious freshly baked…I think.. but still amazing after storage…there are lots of dairy and gluten free recipes on my blog if you are heading that way!
Yes, I know about your lots of other dairy and gluten free recipes. (My computer knows its way to your site, all by itself!)
These particularly attracted me because they quick and easy.
Clever computer !!
Is that 2 cups of ground almonds = 220g, as per your conversion chart?
The conversion chart says that it’s for U.S. measurements, but you don’t seem to be writing in ‘American’ in this recipe.
Help!
Yes it is.
What weight is “a small bowl of icing sugar” please? I can’t find that in the conversion chart.
It’s a just a small bowl with icing sugar in it
Coming from someone who’s made these a few times now, my best advice is to put a small quantity in the bowl to begin with. Remember that the icing sugar is just for coating the mixture, once you have shaped it into the balls.
If you haven’t put enough icing sugar into the bowl for doing the coating, you can always add more icing sugar as you go. But if you put too much in the bowl, you can’t put it back in the original container (ewww!), so you either throw it out or make another batch of amaretti. That last option isn’t a bad idea. 😁