This is my last official 12 Days of Cookies entry, finished a week behind my other cookie-baking buddies: Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench, Courtney of Coco Cooks, Judy of No Fear Entertaining, and Jerry of Cooking by the Seat of My Pants. And you’d think I’d be completely done with all cookies after this marathon, but I agreed to baking a few more for a good friend’s party yesterday.
I think it’s fitting that these flourless bites of chocolate and almonds found their way onto her big cookie platter, don’t you?
One of Gourmet’s Favorite Cookies from December 1994, Heart-Shaped Chocolate Almond Spice Cookies, or “Basler Brunsli” are a pleasant shift from the norm both in taste, ingredients, and preparation for me. The “dough” is predominantly nuts and chocolate with egg whites and sugar. A food processor makes the prep simple.
Basler Brunsli
Here’s the recipe as it appears at Gourmet…
This is just one of Gourmet‘s Favorite Cookies: 1941-2008. Although we’ve retested the recipes, in the interest of authenticity we’ve left them unchanged: The instructions below are still exactly as they were originally printed.
Learn how to roll out thin cookie dough with no mess and no extra flour.
1 1/2 cups whole natural almonds (8 ounces)
1 1/2 cups sugar plus additional for coating work surface
6 ounces Swiss or other fine-quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 cup egg whites (from about 2 large eggs)
Put cookies in oven and immediately reduce temperature to 300° F. Bake cookies, switching position of sheets in oven halfway through baking, 10 to 15 minutes, or until they are just firm (do not overbake or cookies will be hard), and cool on sheets on racks.
Keep cookies in an airtight container up to 2 weeks. Makes about 60 cookies.
My Usual Notes:
- Somehow I erased all the photos I took of these. The card was full in the camera and I had a moment of insanity and cleared the card. Oh well….
- There are nice little chunks of chocolate in these which is quite yummy.
- This recipe made about 40 cookies — not 60. Same sized cutter and same size thickness.
- Yes, you read that one part of the directions correctly, but I almost didn’t. The part where it says to leave the unbaked cookies to sit at room temp for 3 hours? Right. I’d popped mine in the oven for less than a minute when I reread to look for baking time and saw that, so took them right back out and let them sit. They get very firm as you might imagine something with egg whites does after it sits for a while. Interesting.
- I used a fluted pastry cutter to score the cookies. Sure, they look like they’ve got tire treads. Whatever.
- Baking and transferring to the cooling rack is a breeze and once they’re cool, they stack well and keep in a plastic container for days….This one’s a keeper all round.
- Many continued thanks to Oh Nuts! for their dried fruit and nuts in my holiday baking this year.
Now how did that lone surviving Gingerdood make it on to that plate?
{ 10 comments }
Oh my you have been busy baking! I love that last photo of all your beautiful cookies. They all look amazing!
I love your whole tray of cookies–everything looks fantastic. I also love that these use almonds instead of flour. The chocolate helps, too.
Yum. Saving this recipe for sure! I must try these!
Wow – what a tray of Christmas cookies! This makes me want to go out and buy a heart shaped cookie cutter!
Hmmm…I think I’ll try making these tomorrow…but with hazelnuts. I hope it works out, because they’ll be like nutella cookies – YUM!
If I were home I’d be making these!
Although I don’t know if these or the Chocolate Coconut Slices are my favorites so I guess I’d have to make both
Beautiful cookie tray!
I am so impressed you did all of them! I haven’t done one yet.
Clearly I am spending too much time shovelling and not enough time baking!
The cookies look awesome.
Tire treads? Nope. That makes them a little more unique and cute
I loved that Gourmet list but must have overlooked these. They sound wonderful and all of your cookies look perfect!
Awesome! These were on my list but I had to do a last minute swap out when I was running out of nuts at one point. They do look good and I love the little tire tracks. Thanks for baking with us and for sticking it out even with the chaos of the remodel.
Hugs, Andrea