CookEat Recipe
Amaretti II
Fine almond biscuits formed from almonds ground with unwhipped egg white and icing sugar added in stages, lightly dusted with icing sugar before a hot bake.
Method
Steps
Step 1
Gather the ingredients: 200 g blanched sweet almonds; 310 g icing sugar: 300 g for the dough and 10 g for a light surface dusting; 2 egg whites, kept unwhipped; Plain edible wafer sheets, enough for about 30 biscuit bases.
Step 2
Dry the blanched almonds at 120°C for about 10–15 minutes without colouring, then cool completely. Grind them very finely, adding one of the unwhipped egg whites in several small additions to make a smooth almond paste. Use sweet almonds throughout; optional commercially prepared food-grade bitter-almond flavouring may be added in a few drops.
Step 3
Work 150 g of the dough icing sugar into the almond paste. Lightly stir the second egg white to make it easy to divide without whipping. Add half of that white and work in thoroughly, then the remaining 150 g dough sugar, and finally the last half white. Mix until homogeneous and firm enough to form a log.
Step 4
Heat the oven to 200°C. Lay edible wafer sheets on a baking tray. Shape the dough into a log, divide into about 30 equal pieces and use slightly damp hands to round them into walnut-sized balls. Flatten each to about 1 cm thick. Set on the wafer sheets at least 4 cm apart so they can spread and rise, then dust very lightly with the reserved 10 g icing sugar.
Step 5
Bake in the hot oven for about 10–15 minutes, checking early, until the surface is lightly golden and set and a representative centre reaches at least 74°C. Do not allow the high-sugar biscuits to scorch. Let cool before lifting, then trim excess wafer while retaining the attached edible base. They should be light raised almond biscuits rather than thick raw paste. Store fully cooled biscuits in a dry airtight container.
Step 6
For the alternatives inherited from the preceding method, use individual pieces of baking paper instead of edible wafers and remove the paper after cooling; or grease the tray with about 5 g butter and dust with 5 g flour mixed with 5 g additional icing sugar. Keep the hot-oven baking method and the separate light 10 g surface dusting. The two whites in this recipe remain unwhipped throughout.
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