Pinched soft almond paste biscuits!
ingredients for about 16 pieces (total cost about 2,5 € with organic ingredients)
- 65 g egg whites (from about 2 eggs)
- 100 g superfine sugar
- 200 g almonds
- zest from 1/4 lemon
- 3 apricot kernels
- icing sugar for dusting
These fragrant, soft and mouth melting almond biscuits, are again of Sicilian origin. They have a characteristic shape of pinched balls, which gives them their name, pizzicotti, which in Italian means … pinched. I adore them.
So to make it, this is what we do.
First of all we have to peel the almonds and the apricot kernels by blanching them for a minute in boiling water, to easily remove the peel. Then we transfer them on kitchen paper to absorb most of the moisture and we lay them on the wire rack of the dehydrator or the oven at about the lowest temperature for about 5 minutes, just to remove any eventual moisture. We keep aside until they cool.
When the almonds are cool and dry, we place them in the food processor along with the sugar and freshly grated lemon zest and process, just until almonds are reduced to fine powder. Finally, we add the egg whites and we give a few pulses, just until the ingredients are well combined. The dough must be moist, but manageable.
We transfer the dough in a bowl, we cover it with cling film and we let it rest in the fridge for about an hour or so, to let the dough chill a bit and settle. This will make it more malleable.
Then take out the dough, we moist our hands with cold water and taking portions of about 20-25 g we roll them between our palms to form balls, which we place on a baking tray lined with parchment or a silicon mat. Once we have formed all the balls, we take one at a time and pass it from icing sugar, spread on a plate, to cover them well all over.
We arrange the balls on a baking tray lined with new parchment, and with our fingers we pinch them softly on the top to form the “pizzicotti” shape (as shown in the photos). We transfer the baking tray to the fridge and let the pizzicotti chill enough to hold their shape during baking (several hours or, ideally overnight).
Then we bake in a static preheated oven (with the wire rack placed on the middle top part of it) at 170-175 o C (or 150-155 at air function) for about 10-12 minutes, until formed and just begin to slightly color in the outside. At half baking time, we turn the baking tray inside out, to ensure a uniform baking. Do not overbake them. They are meant to remain soft to the mouth.
When ready, we transfer them on a wire rack and we let them dry and cool completely, before storing them in an air tight container, lined with parchment. If we like, we can dust them with extra icing sugar.
