Today I decided to make these delicious Maple Almond Cookies! These were a great desert and cookie recipe overall, as I was looking for a way to incorporate almonds in to a dessert, as I have so many at home and luckily I found this one on this Huffington Post article about almond desserts: huffingtonpost.ca. Also, I randomly picked one of the recipes on the list that I thought looked the best, as well as having the ingredients at home and this was one of them and it turned out to be a vegan, 100% whole grain, dairy free cookie recipe (so it was healthier on top of looking amazing, how great is that!). This recipe turned out really well and when I gave one to my dad he didn't even realize that it was vegan until I told him and he said it tasted like a peanut butter cookie (which makes sense as it has almond butter and almonds in it). As for alterations to the recipe, I found that I had to bake them much longer than described in the recipe, which calls for 8-10min, however, it ended up taking about 15-20min. This recipe also made 18 small cookies and didn't spread too much once baked, so you don't have to worry about spacing too much when baking them on a baking sheet. I also pressed each cookie with my palm as described in the recipe and would definitely recommend not skipping this step, otherwise they don't really flatten much. I ended up using Grade A maple syrup, as I didn't have Grade B at home and it seemed to work out pretty well, so both work if you don't have one or the other. I also used almond extract since I didn't have maple extract at home and it seemed to add to the overall essence of the almond taste, which was really nice :)
As for chopping the almonds, you can either buy pre-chopped almonds or you can chop them at home which I ended up doing with my mini Kitchenaid food processor. You could also use a Vitamix, blender, magic bullet, or if you're really good with a knife you could do that too (however, I don't quite trust my knife skills that much since almonds tend to roll a lot haha). I found also with a Vitamix it ends up being more of a puree or paste if you don't use the write container and blade, so make sure that you use the dry container and blade if you do decide to use the Vitamix. As for the magic bullet I found it never fully chopped all of the nuts if you put too many in at a time but is great for small quantities. Overall, this recipe turned out really well and I hope you enjoyed this review! Keep on baking :)
Here is the link to the recipe: texanerin.com
