I’ve spent a lot of time with French macarons (though not nearly enough).  And, no doubt, masochist that I am, I will spend more time with this little merengued demon.  But not today.  Today we are going to hang-out with the French macaron’s  more easy going cousin, the almond macaroon.

If the French macaron is the Jordan Catalano of cookies, then the almond macaroon is Phil Dunphy.  Easy-going and approachable if not just a little bit simple.

A couple of people have asked if I make any gluten-free (hi Julia) recipes.  The answer is yes, but not on purpose.  To date, my only efforts at avoiding gluten came  by accident when a recipe was naturally gluten-free.  But you guys were nice enough to ask, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for additional recipes.

And this one?  I like.  A lot.  I’ll warn you up-front, it is very almondy and very much like the European cookies you find in, well, Europe.  So, if that isn’t your deal, I’ll see you next week.  However, if you can hang with Europe and almonds and Phil Dunphy, stick around.

This recipe (like the french macaron) uses almond flour in place of wheat flour.  The original recipe called for whole, blanched almonds to be ground into a flour.  Which you can do.  Or, you can just buy almond meal (just be sure to store it in the freezer).   I like the almond flour you can buy from the bulk foods section at Whole Foods. Trader Joe’s carries an almond flour in the nuts and dried fruits section.  If you have a tough time finding almond flour where you live, you can always order it from Bob’s Red Mill.

In a food processor, grind your almonds, or simply combine your almond meal with granulated sugar. And pulse, pulse, pulse.

Next up: an egg white, and a dab of almond extract. The pulse, pulse, pulse until the dough comes together into a sticky ball.

This recipe makes 16 cookies–but the dough ball looks deceptively small.  In order to make sure the cookies were all the same size, I just weighed the dough ball in grams and divided by 16, then portioned-out and weighed each dough ball.  Yes, I am a nerd.  But you knew that already.

The next little tweak I made was to roll each ball in powdered sugar before placing it on the baking sheet.

This comes in handy when you go to flatten-out the balls.  Have I mentioned this dough is sticky?  Have I mentioned how much I dislike touching sticky things with my hands?  A nice roll in confectioner’s sugar solves both problems.

Add an almond for decoration.  I used blanched almonds, but almonds with the skin still on would work just as well.

Once finished, these cookies are lights and slightly chewy.  They also hold-up well over time.  Like I said, the French macaron’s easy going cousin.

Soundtrack: Foster the People

I can’t seem to get enough of their Torches album.  I genuinely enjoy the entire collection of tunes on this playlist.