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Serves
about 50 small cookies
Author Notes
I make these biscuits very small cutting them up with miniture cutters (actually from my granddaughter) and wrap them to put in home made advent calenders that my husband very patiently makes for the children. I find it fascinating to make my own advent calnders without the typical chocolates and it's a joy to give them around at the beggining of December. One Christmas I also made them to decorate the tree but they absorbed humidity from the air and they became very chuey but the tree looked great!! The biscuits are made with a normal pâte sablée enriched with almonds and should be worked quickly. —Maria Teresa Jorge
Ingredients
- Cookies
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8 ounces
all purpose flour
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3.5 ounces
powdered almonds, raw and no skin
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4.5 ounces
butter at room temperature
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4.5 ounces
sugar
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2
whole eggs at room temperature
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1 teaspoon
lemon zest
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1/2 teaspoon
vanilla essence
- Decoration
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1
egg, seperated, at room temperature
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6 ounces
icing sugar
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lemon juice freshly squeezed
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natural food colouring
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natural edible sparkles
Directions
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In a food processor add the sifted flour, sugar, almond powder and lemon zest. Pulse 2 times. Add the butter cut up in small pieces and pulse 8 times until crumbly. Add the vanilla essence and the 2 eggs and pulse until it forms a ball.
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Put the dough between 2 parchment sheets, roll it out very thinly and chill for 30 minutes..
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Pre-heat the oven to 350ºF and line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper
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Remove dough from fridge and cut little cookies (or big ones, whatever you fancy) with different Christmas motifes. Transfer to the baking sheets.
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Beat lightly the egg yolk and brush the top of the cookies. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until light brown.
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Meanwhile sift the icing sugar in a bowl. Lightly beat the egg white and add a little at a time to the sugar with a few drops of lemon juice until you have a thick paste.
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Divide this paste in several bowls (depends how many colours you want to make) and add 1 or 2 drops of food colouring in each bowl to get different colours. If you prefer make just one colour and don't divide the sugar cream. Please remember that a drop of natural food colouring is very strong so go easy on the food colouring if you want pastel colours.
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Brush the cooked cookies with the icing sugar mixture and decorate with edible sparkles or edible Christmas decorations.
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Note: Sorry, no photo as we made the advent calenders at the end of November and I didn't think about taking pictures, but I promise you they look really cute and the biscuits are very nice.
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Note 2 - You can also make them bigger in size and serve them on a pretty plate at Christmas.
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