My Most Expensive Cookies Ever

So one of my jobs at my Mom’s Inn is to make something for afternoon tea. My mother is pretty much happy not to have to cook anything for a change, so I can usually do whatever I feel like doing. So I use this opportunity to make something I’ve been wanting to try. The other week I starting making my own ice cream, and after success with Vanilla, I decided to try making Mojito ice cream. Now I can’t say it went over all that well, but it tasted exactly like a Mojito, so counting it as a success. I thin it might be better served on the side of something, or maybe the world just isn’t ready for it yet. I do want to try to replicate the Chili ice cream I had in Thailand though.

One of the things that has gone over well is my Lemon Tart, which I first made for one of Barb and Ferns famous BBQ’s (which I miss terribly). It’s a really nice lemony tart, with an awesome pine nut crust. Pine nuts though are expensive, so I don’t make this too often. It’s from the Bouchon cookbook, and they tend not to do things on the cheap. All of that was just to say, that there are these cookies in the cookbook, that I‘ve been dying to try, and they turned into the most expensive cookies I’ve ever made. I didn’t know that at the time, and since I had already decided to try it, there really was no going back.

First off they required 5 cups of Almond flour (about 2½ lbs). So I went to Guido’s and it turns out almond flour is like $15 a Lbs!!!! Luckily you can make your own by grinding up almonds into a fine powder. This took the better part of an hour, as it could only be done in some batches. The other expensive ingredient was real vanilla beans. Guido’s had two choices 2 for $10 or 3 for $15. That’s some fucked up shit. For Vanilla? Damn. Needed to be done though. So after grinding up Almonds, and tracing 40 2 inch circles on parchment papers, the cookies were actually pretty easy. It took the better part of the day (as you had to dry them for 3 hours before baking), and I made a total mess of the place, but the cookies turned out awesome. The cookie itself was like a meringue, all crisp on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle, and the vanilla butter cream was great sandwiched in-between two cookies.

Luckily I managed to snag a few before the guest got to them.