Florentine Cookies
Florentine Cookies
My colleague baked two huge bottles of Florentine cookies for the office and we have been chomping on them ever since and now working our way down the second bottle.
So I asked her for the recipe and she said, “sure! It’s a no-brainer.”
And trust me, I love a good no-brainer. Her Florentine was a deep dark brown and very neatly cut into shape. Mine was just any-o-how cut into shape with a pizza grater. And she’s right, it’s really a no-brainer. So easy to make I could literally do it in a Houdini asylum suit.
It took me about 8 minutes to bake, which was pretty quick, but I decided that 10 minutes would have made more sense for my oven. And I prefer it to be a little more baked and crunchier.
The end result was a Florentine that I could call my own. I added silvered blanched almonds, pistachio meat, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Mix in the Florentine powder into the ingredients and it was done. Very easy to make. Plus not too sweet.
Recipe
Ingredients
Silvered Blanched Almonds – 250 grams (Phoon Huat sells everything a baker would need, Google it!)
Pistachio Meat – 250 grams (again you can get this from Phoon Huat)
Pumpkin Seeds – 125 grams (you don’t need so many of them, but they add a nice emerald green to it.)
Sunflower Seeds – 125 grams (I would have loved pine nuts, but couldn’t find any)
Sea Salt – half a teaspoon (there is a theory that said whatever sweet thing you do, you gotta add a little salt to it)
Florentine Mix – 250 grams (they only come in 500 grams packets, so you really need a good digital kitchen scale to help weigh out the portions)
Method
1. Pour all the dry ingredients into a metal mixing bowl. It can be plastic or porcelain, it doesn’t matter. Add the sea salt, and then the Florentine mix and give the ingredients a good combine.
2. Pre-heat the oven in fan mode at 180 degrees Celsius, usually about 10 minutes.
3. Spread the ingredients mix onto a baking tray lined with baking paper or grease proof baking parchment. Use a spoon to smoothen it as much as you can. Don’t worry if it is not perfect.
4. Place the tray into the oven and bake the ingredients for 8 minutes first and then moderate it if you feel like it is not as crunchy or if 8 minutes is too long. It really depends on what type of oven you have. I use my Apple Watch to do a count down timer and it’s really useful.
5. Once it is done, the Florentine powder should have melted and bonded with the ingredients. Let it cool down, which is also very fast. The cookie once cooled would be quite brittle, so if you want to cut it, you would need to be quick.
6. A pizza grater works the best. Cut it whilst it is still warm and cooling down. It would be easier to cut without breaking the cookie too much. Once it is hardened, it would quite tedious to shape the slice.
7. Another tip to ensure a beautiful Florentine slice would be to press it down with a flat surface. You could also roll a glass jar on the surface to flatten it.
8. Best served with a cup of coffee.
Bon Appetit!
Use a metal spoon to evenly spread the ingredients.