This is what it looks like outside right now. Gross. Let's barricade ourselves inside and make some warm yummies! On my way home from work today I ran into the grocery store and they had bag oranges on special. Yes, they are pretty mushy and aren't going to be fresh much longer, but sometimes citrus fruit can trick my brain into thinking it's summer.
Can I bake something with these oranges? I've got about a cup of slivered almonds from Christmas baking that needs used up, and eggs and butter in the fridge. A quick search on foodnetwork.com produced some options, and I settled on
Crunchy Orange-Almond Cookies from Food Network
This recipe wants you to start out with whole almonds so that you can use them to garnish the finished cookies. I wasn’t worried about that so my slivered almonds worked just fine. I ground them up in the food chopper.
You know what smells great? Butter + sugar + orange. Yes. Mixing this together was really pleasant. The recipe requests that you mix the butter and sugar together by hand with a wooden spoon. I feel that’s a little picky, but I obliged.
Everything was looking great until it was time to add the flour mixture. It seemed like there was not enough moisture/fat to absorb all the dry goods. If I made these again, I would try adding another 2 TBSP of butter to help the mixture come together.
These crunchy cookies are VERY crunchy. I didn’t quite shape them to the specifications of the recipe, so maybe that’s why they seemed a little brick-like. I can see how they would be better if they were thinner, maybe a little lighter and crispier. Then again, I’m a chewy cookie kind of person. The orange flavor was very light. This might be because of the type of oranges I used or the fact that they're out of season.
