These sandy sandwich cookies (from Julien Wagner of Seven Hills Baking Company) are the pure essence of toasted almond. The flavor that almond extract in a bottle wishes it could be when it grows up.
And if you have a scale, these come together incredibly fast. A fun cookie project with kids (of all ages) because you get to roll the dough between your hands into teensy spheres, then glue the cookies together with your favorite chocolate.
Julien likes “a 72% chocolate. In this case its Guittard Onyx-72 but semisweet chocolate chips are fine if that’s what’s around.” (We used these.)
Another pro tip: You will need to toast almonds but “it can be difficult to see when they’re toasted because of the skin. I usually toast between 375-400 degrees for 5-6 minutes but I ultimately rely on my nose to tell me when they’re done. When they’re cooling you should hear a crackling sound and when totally cool should have a nice snappy crunch.” Check our little video to hear the crackle!
These are easy to make ahead. Just freeze the rolled dough balls until you’re ready to bake. Julien “used to make these by the hundreds and always froze them. They’re small enough that they can almost go directly in the oven. They’ll thaw a little while they get arranged on the sheet pan. As long as they are cold going into the oven. Otherwise they will spread too much in the oven.”