When I stumbled upon the Florentine cookie recipe, I, like most people I imagine, thought they were decadent Italian cookies with almonds, but as it turns out, these fancy desserts were developed at none other than the Palace of Versailles in Paris, France in the 18th century. The recipe here will be for milk chocolate Florentine cookies, but if you want to cut some calories you can leave them plain, leaving you with still delicious and very pretty fruit and nut cookies that you can make as a special treat for family and friends.
To make this basic recipe into one of my delicious chocolate desserts recipes, you'll make the basic cookie recipe then make a dipping sauce like you'd use with chocolate covered strawberries. The chocolate sauce not only allows you to add some of that beloved brown concoction to these tasty cookies, but also it acts as a binder for decorative elements such as coconut flakes, mini chocolate chips, or nuts.
This is also a good cookie choice for those who need to go gluten-free. It's a simple recipe to make, but looks and tastes surprisingly delicious.
Delicious Chocolate Desserts: Florentine Cookie Recipe with Milk Chocolate
Ingredients:
- 4 Tbsp butter
- ⅓ c. honey
- 12 maraschino cherries (remove the stems, pat them dry, quarter them)
- ¼ c. pine nuts
- 1 c. almonds, sliced
- Finely grated zest of 1 large orange
- 2 Tbsp. milk
Directions:
- Heat the oven up to 350 degrees.
- Get out two baking sheets and line them with parchment paper.
- In large saucepan, heat butter on low heat. Be careful not to scorch.
- Add honey to the butter mixture, increasing the heat to medium-high.
- Then drop in the almonds, pine nuts, cherries, and orange zest. Bring the mixture to a boil; make sure you stir it thoroughly to coat all the ingredients.
- Add milk to the Florentine cookie mixture. It should continue to boil. Stir the mixture until liquid has reduced. Do this until the fruit and nut cookies mixture starts to hold together.
- Place tablespoons of the Florentine cookie mixture onto the baking sheets.
- Bake the cookies until they become golden brown--should be about eight minutes.
- Remove the Italian cookies from the oven, letting them cool in a dry place until crisp. Don't remove from the baking sheets until they're cool.
- Once they're cooled, peel them off the parchment paper.
- Make the chocolate dipping sauce. Dip the cookies into the chocolate sauce to make the Florentine cookie recipe with milk chocolate.
- Store them in a cool, dry place.
Tips:
When you're making the chocolate sauce as per the instructions on the video, be sure to use milk chocolate to make this a lighter chocolate dessert. You can also use dark chocolate, but the resulting cookies will have a slightly more bitter taste due to the dark chocolate.
Make sure you store the cookies where they won't get humid. The humidity will make these faux Italian cookies with almonds become sticky.
Comments