So what did I do with all those left over egg whites from the Challah?
I made these soft amaretti of course. Just getting in practice for Christmas I tell myself, plus I can offer them to Choclette for her cooking event, we should cocoa.
These are based on the ones that Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial introduced me to last year and they are incredibly popular with everyone who the recipe has been shared with. Are they that easy to make? Yes! Patrick’s four-year old made them last weekend so what are you waiting for?
So I hope these are acceptable Choclette! All I can say is that they are really expensive in the shops in their fancy tins and if you know someone who is a nut fan then this is a winner every time!
I used:
- 250 grams ground almonds
- 200 grams ground hazelnuts
- 50 grams ground pistachio nuts
- 4 egg whites
- 400 grams sugar
- 1/2 tsp of amaretto di saronno (optional but good)
Chocolate for dipping and drizzling
- 100 grams of 85% dark chocolate (Fair Trade Co op)
- 50 grams of milk choc chips (not sure where they came from)
To make:
- Grind up any nuts that you might need for this.
- Hazelnuts with their skins on are good. I used up the last of the ones I foraged a few weeks ago plus a few more that I bought and added some pistachio nuts and some ground almonds too.
- Mix with the sugar and the egg whites till you have a nice sticky solid mass.
- Put some baking parchment on baking trays.
- Spoon out the mixture into blobs if you like blobs.
- If you want high little macaroons then you need to wet your hands and roll the mixture into proper balls. Today I went for mostly blobs and a couple of little ones.
- Heat the oven to 160 C. Put in oven and bake until the tops start to crack a little or until the edges of the blobs start to turn a little brown. Anywhere from 12 minutes to half an hour depending on how big you have made them. They should be soft when you take them out.
- Break up your chocolate into small pieces and put in a pyrex bowl. Keep back about 30 per cent of the chocolate in small pieces. Microwave on high in short 20 second bursts till it is melted. Stir in between each burst. Once it is melted, add the chocolate you kept back and allow to melt at room temperature. If it really won’t go then give it another 10 seconds in the microwave.
At this point your husband tells you to drizzle the chocolate with a knife – as you don’t know what he is talking about, you ask him to do it. So he does. He also demonstrates how to half dip a biscuit. As there was a tiny bit of chocolate left over we dug out a silicon chocolate mould and put some marshmallows in the holes and poured the last bit of chocolate over them and made chocolate buttons. No wasting chocolate in this house!
Zeb Bakes 
Perfect! And lovely tempered shiny chocolate to boot! I went fossicking in our local Italian deli for essences, and could only find an orange blossom one. Had to buy it anyway! :)
Love recipes likes this that use so few ingredients and are such taste explosions!
:-) Mandy
All I can say is yum!
I wish I lived close to you- your house looks like fun!
Very pretty little biscuits! I’m sure that combination of nuts tasted good too.
Good drizzling technique too! I use a freezer bag with a very small hole in one corner.
Yum. Will definitely try these, as you can imagine amaretti have a very special place in my heart. And you are right they are so expensive in the shops. Not that you will have any left over but if you ever do a nice thing to do with them is layer them in a glass with some fresh fruit (berries are best so this is really a dessert for summer), mascarpone and coulis.
Thank you all for your nice comments!
Celia, I seem to have tempered the chocolate, you’re right! – it’s still shiny and hard this morning after being left out at room temp.
Mandy, it’s so easy, that’s the best bit!
I wish you could pop by for a coffee and a cookie too Heidi.
Suelle I am sure your drizzling is more controlled than Brian’s knife technique!
@ Annalisa That’s a lovely suggestion – I’ll see if we have any left in a couple of days time ;)
PS I see that the Bahlsen Akora are back in the shops though…. I still want to know how to make those.
Wonderful Joanna – of course these are acceptable and much appreciated – thank you. They look lovely and would make a great Christmas gift – I’d certainly appreciate getting some anyway :) I like the use of all the different nuts too. AND you successfully tempered the chocolate – this is becoming my nemesis now.
I don’t really get the whole tempering thing. The only thing I did differently was keep some of the bar chocolate back and add it into the melted chocolate. I didn’t keep it at a magic temperature for a set period of time, so I guess it was just luck Choclette. Glad you liked them :)
They look really delicious Joanna. Love the different drizzling/dipping techniques and the innovative use of spare chocolate. I’ll have a choc dipped marshmallow while everyone else enjoys the nuts!
They are a bit heavy on the nuts ;) on the other hand, they are gluten free! I did the choc dipped marshmallows for you of course, but Brian has eaten them all already. I saw your bravery on your blog just now. I’m really impressed C ! Lucky workmates too!
Yum Joanna! Nutty goodness in a biscuit and just casually draped with a little tempered chocolate… very nicely done.
Casually tempering… *sigh* one day it will be so.
Brydie, it was coincidental tempering, no one believes me :P They get better with each day like all things nutty.
Yum…how good do they look?!! I could do with one (or five) right now, with a nice cup of tea…mmm. Too tempting for a person without an oven (or kitchen, or ingredients…)!!
An oven vs playing in the ocean – I think I would swap out the oven for a while :) Thanks for visiting Spice Girl!
Wow, wild hazelnuts! I’ve never seen them before – what an interesting look. We grow a lot of commercial hazelnuts here in OR, but I guess I’ve never looked closely at them growing – or the cultivated ones just look different than the wild ones!
Think I’ll add these to my short list of Christmas cookies (every year I say, “No cookies this Christmas”, and every year I bake a bunch anyway.). Thanks for the recipe.
Doc, Why wait till Christmas? If you do make them, leave them a few days (I’m always saying that, but really the flavour develops after a couple of days). They are the easiest cookies ever. To create a commercial looking rounded little one, you take about a dessert spoon ful, and round it up between wetted hands. If you make them small they should bake in 10 – 12 minutes. You want them looking a little puffed and cracked on top but still very soft when they come out of the oven.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. I imagine these would be good with a nice cuppa alongside ;0)
Hi Chele, thanks for visiting :) They are lovely with a cuppa. We’ve decided we like the half dipped ones best. The drizzled ones don’t have enough chocolate on them!
These remind of little hazelnut meringue biscuits I bought recently in Carluccio’s, which apparently are a Piemonte speciality and made note to try and re-make them at home. I was nicely surprised how having the hazelnut was so much more flavoursome than ground almonds, so I’m sure these taste as good as they look.
Azelia, all I can say is make a batch and play around with the nut content. The texture and the flavour improves with keeping. Today they are pretty perfect, I ate three instead of lunch… If you don’t play around with chocolate and just keep them plain they really are very quick to do :)
Yummmm, they look wonderful.
Hello Brownieville Girl. thank you :)
Did these with freshly ground walnuts at the weekend, very good….interestingly they flattened more than on previous occasions with almonds or hazelnuts….why? probably a question for the back pages of the New Scientist rather than your blog….
Probably, but would love to see a picture? If you email me one I will add it to your comment :) How do you shape them? I made the most commercial looking shapes, small high domed, by wetting hands and taking little ball of mixture and rolling it into that funny not ball shape, looks a bit like two pyramids stuck together. If the walnuts are coarser ground than the almonds that might be a reason, or their higher fat content, brazil nuts would probably do the same as they are very high in fat.