Amaretti cookies are fabulous with an afternoon coffee or tea, or to close a meal with a sweet finish in your mouth. If you’ve never been a fan of Amaretti cookies because of the strong almond flavours, try this recipe! It doesn’t use the bitter almond extract that is included in most of the Amaretti recipes; it uses orange zest to give a fresh and cheerful flavour. These babies will fill up your house with such festive aroma while they’re being baked in the oven – your family will all get perked up for Christmas season just smelling these. What’s even better is that the recipe requires only few ingredients, and you’re done in 30 minutes including baking time! Oh, did I say that these make great gifts?

Ingredients for 60 Amaretti (ca. 1.5cm diameter size)

• 300g almond meal
• 150g sugar
• 80g egg white 
• 2 good pinches of salt
• zest of one orange
• 2 tablespoon/Esslöffel Grand Marnier (optional) 
• 1 cup of powder sugar for dusting the Amaretti before baking

Steps

1. Heat up the oven to 160C with fan. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
2. In a bowl, put the almond meal, sugar, and orange zest. Mix well so that the orange zest is well distributed.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white with salt until firm.
4. Add in the beaten egg white into the bowl of almond mixture.
5. Add in the Grand Marnier in to the bowl and mix well. The dough will look like below picture.
6. Scoop out the Amaretti dough with a teaspoon and roll it into a ball using your palms, about 1.5cm diameter in size. (If your Amaretti dough comes out too wet that you cannot form a ball, put the dough in the refrigerator for about 1 hour to firm it up. Another way to do it is to use two teaspoons and form a semi-ball, dust it in the powder sugar, pick it up with the teaspoons and place them on the baking tray.)
7. Roll it in the powder sugar, and place it on the baking tray. Repeat.
8. Bake for about 12 minutes in the 160C convection oven. You’ll see the beautifully crack while baking.
9. Once cooled, put them in an air-tight glass jar near the coffee machine. They are good for a week, but you’ll see how fast they disappear!