Today, I decided to get my Christmas cookies done.Last week, we carried out our 4th Annual Cookie Swap at work and I made Chocolate Dipped Almond Crescents; they looked identical to these. In preparation for that baking session, I asked Eric to pick up some nuts for baking. I asked him to get almonds and another type of nut, maybe pecans. He brought home a pound of raw cashews, in addition to the almonds.
So, for today's cookie, I decided to use the cashews. I toasted them in the oven, then ground them into a meal in the food processor. I stopped them just at that point where they were about to become paste. I make my own nut butters, so, I've already met that point of no return. if you haven't ever tried this, it is the point where all of the nut meats stop rotating in the bowl and suddenly press up against the wall of the processor, spilling over at the top.
I decided to make some changes to the Almond Crescent recipe I had found online and this is what I came up with:
1 c. unsalted butter, plus 2T, room temperature
2/3c. granulated white sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
Cream these together, then add:
1 1/2 c. cashew meal (approximately 1/2 lb raw, unsalted nuts)
1/2 tsp salt (I grind mine very fine in a mortar)
2c. white flour
Cut together until you have a moist meal that holds it's shape when pressed together. If your room is very warm, you may have a dough with a soft texture and that is fine, too.
Working with clean hands, roll balls about an inch in diameter, then roll out, shaping the crescent with tapered ends. Place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, with at least an inch between them, as they will spread a bit. How many cookies you get from this recipe depends on the size of cookie you make. You will get about 4 1/2 dozen with these instructions. I made larger cookies last week, resulting in 3 1/2 dozen per batch and did not have to alter the baking time.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until the bottoms begin to brown. Let them sit on the sheet for a minute, then slide the entire sheet of parchment onto a firm surface and allow them to cool before handling.
Melt your chocolate over low heat in a double boiler. To help it dip smoothly, add about a T of vegetable shortening for each bag of chips used. I'm a fan of Ghirardelli semi-sweet for dipping, but, you should use whatever you like best.
Dip your cookies at least half way, I think of the end as a little handle. I sprinkled some of the nut meal on top of the wet chocolate on some of the cookies and I thought that was a nice touch. You should probably have a baking assistant for this, though. I found the chocolate was getting hard by the time I could get to it, myself.
Melt your white chocolate in the double boiler over low heat, also. Transfer it to a pastry bag fitted with a fine tip and pipe the tops of all of the cookies in the design of your choice.
I worked in shifts, transferring pans of cookies onto the (unheated) porch to cool. While I was out there I saw this! But, it didn't amount to much; the grass is still green.
At the outset, I thought I might like a Cashew Crescent better. Cashews have a higher fat content than almonds do and their flavor is so subtly sweet. I wasn't disappointed! I doubt that I will return to the Almond Crescent after this; I may even try pecan and hazelnut versions.
Photos are here.
9 comments:
Those look so beautiful and tasty! I like the idea of less flour too. I'll be near a co-op again tomorrow so will buy some cashews.
Oops! I meant less sugar, not flour!
Ha! This cookie is not that sweet, the sweetness really comes from the chocolate. But, they'd be really tasty on their own and I'd bet that they'd be really good if you rolled them in the nut meal before they were baked. You could do all sorts of variations with them :)
The original recipe called for 2c. butter, 1c. purchased almond flour, 2 1/2c. white flour and 1tsp each of vanilla and almond extract.
I don't know if you make nut butters, but, almonds are lower in fat than other nuts and grind kinda funny. The meal they produced was on the grainy side and I added the extra butter to compensate for that.
When it came to using the cashews, they're fattier and made a softer meal. I still used more butter, since I was using a meal instead of a finely milled flour. Plus, I wanted to cut down on the white flour and up the nut content. So, I swapped out that 1/2c. of flour. It is very noticeable when the cookies come out of the oven, they will absolutely fall apart if they're messed with. But, once they're cool, they handle fine.
All in all, I think this configuration has a much better flavor and texture.
I do make nut butters and know what you mean about almonds. I would have to use coconut oil instead of butter or I would have to make ghee because of my new diet (and take the plunge into Stevia) but I think your recipe is workable for food allergies like mine! I'm very excited!
I've never messed with Stevia. I wonder how it compares to sugar, in terms of volume for usage. I don't have much experience with coconut oil either. But, that sounds good to me!
Okay, I made this with shortening and pecans. Not a cashew in sight in town for some reason! I did use sugar because Stevia doesn't compare in volume at all and I have no clue how to work to make up for that.
They were divine!
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
So, glad they came out well for you!
I did a quick Google search on "volume stevia vs sugar" and came up with this chart:
http://www.carriagehousemedicine.com/stevia_conversion_chart.pdf
This seems to be the most informative of a few I looked at. It appears that you would use the general volume conversion rule at the top to find how many teaspoons of sugar are in the recipe.
This recipe calls for 2/3c. of sugar and if I am doing the math right, that breaks down into 32 tsp. of sugar. The chart goes on to state that the sugar to Stevia equivalency is 4 to 1. So, dividing 32 by 4 gives us 8tsp. of Stevia. This gives us a 24tsp. volume deficiency in the recipe, or 1/2c.
You could add a 1/2c. of flour to make up this difference, but, that would probably change the character of the cookie in some undesirable ways. The other option would be to reduce the total volume of the butter and the flours to match the Stevia.
So, there are 56T of flour in the recipe and 18T of butter. I went and found this handy calculator:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/percentage-calculator.html
and found that the difference between the 3 and 3.5c of flour is a reduction of 14.29%. So, I reduced the totals on the flour, nut meal and butter proportionately and came up with 1 1/4c. flour, 1 1/10c.(17.6T or 1c. + 1.6T) of nut meal and 15.42T of butter. Does this make sense?
The other way to approach this is to look at the percentage of reduction that happened between the sugar and the Stevia. According to the calculator, the drop from 32tsp. to 8tsp. is 75%, which makes sense, since we divided by four to get there.
So, a 75% reduction in the flour, meal and butter produces the amounts of 8T (1/2c.), 6T and 4.5T, respectively.
But, I think this approach is wrong for this application. Since the reduced volume of Stevia is supposed to produce the same sweetness as our original volume of sugar, I think this would produce an overly sweetened cookie. I think the correct thing to do is reduce the original amounts of all ingredients other than the sugar to match the percentage of volume lost by the conversion from sugar to Stevia.
Hmmmm...what do you think?
Here are some more thoughts on sweetening options:
http://allrecipes.com/howto/baking-with-sugar-and-sugar-substitutes/
I hope your Christmas was merry! I spent mine sick on the couch and I called into work today, which explains why I have all of this time to roll this idea around. I'm not up to much else!
I hope your feeling better!
Well, I think your first calculations sound right. I would be afraid to try that much stevia because of its sweetness but It looks like much more tampering would change the recipe too much. I'd read sources where they say a 1/4 tsp of it is comparable to one cup of sugar. Its sweet but not that sweet!
Thanks for this because it'll come in handy. So far the sugar didn't kill me!
What a rotten Christmas or you though! Glad you are resting.
Thank you for the well wishes! I just busted into a plate of cookies (these very same ones!) that was supposed to go to a Christmas Eve party with me. I must be on the mend if I want to eat cookies.
The comments with the first chart on the varying degrees of sweetness encountered in stevia are interesting. I am sure it is very different, depending on where it has been grown.
Also, I don't know a whole lot about what the commercial baking preparations of stevia are like. But, I am assuming that they are prepared with some sort of binder or filler to deliver a measurable, uniform and usable product. That may account for the difference between claims of 1/4tsp. vs 1c., although that sounds a bit extreme.
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