a tasty monkey bread variant.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 45 mins |
| Servings: | 36 |
| Yield: | 3 dozen |
Ingredients
- cooking spray
- 12 ounces almond paste
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 4 egg whites, divided
- 1 ½ cups pine nuts
- all-purpose flour for rolling
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line 2 cookie sheets with foil; lightly grease the foil with cooking spray.
- Place almond paste and white sugar in a food processor; blend until combined. Add confectioners’ sugar and 2 egg whites; blend until smooth.
- Whisk remaining 2 egg whites in a small bowl. Place pine nuts on a shallow plate.
- With lightly floured hands, roll dough into 1-inch balls. Coat balls in egg whites, shaking off excess, then roll in pine nuts, pressing lightly to stick. Arrange balls on cookie sheets, and flatten slightly to form a 1 1/2-inch round.
- Bake in the preheated oven until lightly browned, 15 to 18 minutes. Let stand on cookie sheets briefly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
- If you need to keep these cookies gluten-free, use gluten-free flour when shaping the cookies.
Reviews
I’ve made these twice. Yes, it’s a messy process but the taste is good. Here’s some lessons learned – (1) definitely use parchment paper to line your baking sheets, (2) use a solid-type almond paste, I used Solo and kept it in the fridge until ready to use. 12 oz is a 1 1/2 boxes. I also put the dough back in the fridge for about 15 mins before making the balls; (3) you’ll need about 12 oz of pignoli nuts depending on how much you coat them, that was 1 1/2 bags from Trader Joe’s; (4) you might be able to use just one egg white for coating if you are using jumbo eggs. Whipping the egg whites makes the rolling process a little less messy.
Followed recipe exactly. Used Odense brand almond paste as could not find other brand. A total disaster. Dough was sticky and extremely difficult to handle. After dipping in egg whites, even worse! An unholy mess. Next, after baking could not be removed from sprayed tinfoil (as instructed). Cookies stuck. broke and fell apart. Definitely fully cooked. This recipe cost me over $20 for the almond paste and pignoli nuts. The cookies will go into the trash bin. Inedible.
These cookies are great and easy! I used Mandelin almond paste I purchased on Amazon, very good. Followed the recipe, I did add a pinch of salt. Baked them on Reynolds nonstick foil (yellow box) but didn’t grease it, the cookies stuck! Make sure to grease the foil! Also, I chilled the batter for 30 minutes, it’s very sticky. Dipping my fingers in ice water kept the batter from sticking to my fingers. Flour was useless in preventing that, made it worse imho. I toasted my pine nuts too. I used a small 1TBSP Mellon baller type ice cream scoop to portion out the dough. Made about 3 dozen cookies. Very good!
The recipe will work much better if you use Solo solid block 8Oz paste. The canned paste has added liquid causing a wet dough. You can also use Parchment Paper instead of foil. If you want puffy cookies add 1/2 TSP of baking soda. Good luck.
Easy to make and delicious
They taste just like the pignoli from my favorite Italian bakery in South Philly.
Way too runny! I put the dough in the fridge to help but they came so thin that when I tried getting them off the pan they broke! Terrible recipe.
I’m an experienced baker and this is a pretty straightforward recipe. I followed the directions, read the reviews and used Solo Almond paste as recommended. Unfortunately this never formed into dough. It’s a very sticky, thick liquid. Kept it in the fridge for an hour, no change. Putting it in freezer now to see if it will firm up so I can make balls out of it. Pretty disappointing.
Not the easiest to roll into balls, but worth every bit of trouble!
This is a delicious cookie recipe. Refrigerating the dough helped to make it easier to handle while making the crescent shape. A 1 tbsp cookie scoop is good, but only filled about 3/4 full in order to get the inside cooked nicely without burning the bottom. My cookies definitely filled out a bit in the oven. Also, I ended up adding more pine nuts than was listed in the recipe. Cooked for 14 minutes, 1 cookie sheet in at a time.
I makes this recipe every year since I found it. It is perfect.
amazing recipe!!!
For those who don’t have almond paste in your supermarkets – you can make your own using almond flour. If consistency is too runny, had more almond flour and place in fridge to harden slightly before molding into balls.
These came out amazing. Definitely a hit on Easter (and when I’ve made them in the past). As good or even better than our NY bakeries. I use Solo Almond Paste (comes in cardboard box with paste in foil). I sprayed my parchment paper lightly with cooking spray. This helped with removing the cookies a lot, without changing their shape. Delicious!
For those of you that said the batter was so liquidy that you couldnt roll it into a ball or do anything with it ; You probably did what I did. I mistakenly bought Almond Filling and Not Paste!!!
I used the solo brand and had a dough that was far too wet to hand roll. I put it in a bag and piped it onto the baking sheets. I then used a pastry brush to apply the egg whites and pressed the pine nuts into the tops. They came out perfectly with 18 minutes cooking time. And no messy hands!
This was my first time making these. Typically I buy a few from my local Italian bakery here in NYC. NEVER will I buy them. These were so easy to make, baked perfectly even in color and shape and I used my melon ball scoop to make them even. Everyone raved about how amazing they were. Golden, soft, chewy and crunchy from the nuts was so wonderful. Making them again this coming weekend at my aunts request for her birthday. I didn’t however get the amount of cookies it said i think i got 3 dozen or so but still solid recipe!!!!!!!
This recipe is a mess. It cost me about 30.00 in wasted product because of the terrible instructions. It is not detailed enough when you increase the number of cookies the instructions stay the same. Biggest loss was cost of nuts and almond paste. It does not tell you to make egg whites into soft peaks and fold in the almond paste. What a shame look at another recipe they don’t use conf. sugar and give decent instructions. Please dont waste your money trying this on. It is really bad.
Ugh terrible recipe. I joined just so I could give a warning. The “dough” was more like a batter. I added another 8 Oz of almond paste just to thicken it a bit. I used a mini icecream scoop to make maybe 1oz “balls” I had to use a lot of flour to get the batter to form a ball then it fell once it hit the egg. In the end I got 20 cookies; not 36 and 2 of them didn’t get nuts. I wish I looked harder for the recipe I used last time which was fantastic. I would not use this one again …. they are in the oven now and I’m praying for an edible cookie.
I cut this recipe in half because we are addicted to these cookies. This was a great recipe. I did use 8oz almond paste 1can because I was too lazy to weigh out the right amount and I was light on confectioners sugar measuring. I also put the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes while I cleaned up prep area and set up for egg whites to pine nuts. Onto cookie sheets. Family vote, yummy/why didn’t you make more!?
A) The folks who said the mix was too runny *I think* used Solo Almond FILLING instead of Solo Almond Paste (ask me how I know…….) B) You do not need 12 oz of almond paste (and I hate when recipes do this….expect you to use 1 and 1/2 containers of something). You can use the 8 ounces of almond paste and everything else exactly as written and the cookies will be great. C) I toasted the pignoli nuts in a dry pan before using. D) Forget the aluminum foil and use parchment paper. There will be no issue when removing them from the baking sheet.