Almond & Lemon Biscuits – Easy Recipe

Almond & Lemon Biscuits, from a Marcella Hazan recipe, are very good indeed. They are plain but with such a great lemon flavour. Easy to make too, and to eat.

I recently bought a book my Marcella Hazan ‘The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking’. What a great book it is too.

I have already seen several recipes that I want to try. But I thought I would begin with a very simple one. These Almond & Lemon Biscuits.

As this blog entry title suggests the biscuits are easy to make. A simple dough made with flour and ground almonds and flavoured with lemon juice and zest. Nothing could be easier. However that simplicity doesn’t mean a lack of flavour. The lemon, for me, is the star of the show.

The method is simple, with a food processor. But it is also very easy to do by hand, though it takes a little longer. Simply mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the egg yolks and lemon juice. Process the mixture until it clumps and forms a dough. Squeeze the dough together, and roll it out before cutting the biscuit shapes. For ease the dough can be divided into pieces before rolling out.

My Biscuits

I made my dough as mentioned about and cut out the biscuits. Then I brushed them with beaten egg before baking for 8 minutes.

They coloured slightly during that time. I removed them from the oven and transferred with to a wire rack to cool completely.

Then I had a taste. Wow! What a great flavour with that zingy lemon. The texture is a dense one, as can be expected from those ingredients. Indeed these are very similar to some biscuits I made years ago from another Italian recipe.

They are great snacking biscuits I think.

I shall be making more of Marcella’s recipes for sure.

Another easy biscuit recipe is Swedish Caramel Cookies – Kolasnittar.

Almond & Lemon Biscuits – Easy Recipe

Recipe by Marcella Hazan(The Essentials Of Classic Italian Cooking) – adaptedCourse: Biscuits, CookiesCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy

Servings

48

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

8

minutes

Ingredients

• 113g(1 cup + t2 tbsp) ground almonds

• 113g(1/2 cup + 1 tbsp) caster sugar

• 2 medium egg yolks(large in USA)

• 255g(1 2/3 cups + 1 1/2 tsp, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup) plain flour

• 60ml(1/4 cup) lemon juice

• grated zest from one lemon

• pinch of salt

• 1 beaten egg for brushing

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/390F
• Line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper or silicone mats.
• Place the flour, almonds, sugar, salt and zest into a processor and pulse to combine(the whole recipe can be done by hand in a large bowl)
• Add the lemon juice and egg yolks and processor until the mixture begins to clump.
• Tip the mixture onto a work surface and squeeze into a dense dough ball.
• Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces.
• Roll out each piece, on a lightly floured surface, to a thickness of 1/4 inch/6 mm.
• Use a 2 inch/5 cm cookie cutter to cut out discs.
• Place the discs on the baking trays and re-roll the excess dough.
• Brush the tops of each disc with beaten egg.
• Bake the biscuits for 8 minutes, they will slightly colour, and then remove to a wire rack to cool.
• Store the biscuits in an airtight container.