Earlier this week we featured a sweet and crunchy Greek cookie that we made this year for the Christmas baking season, and today we’re showing you the second cookie we made this year. These florentines, as you might be able to guess, come from Italy, and they’re distinctive because they’re made with nuts, butter, and a sweet syrup but very little flour, unlike most cookies. You can see that these florentines (which we based on a recipe from Bon Appétit) turn out thin and crispy, and the chocolate dip that goes along with each cookie adds in a creamy contrast as well as a cool look. These might not seem like traditional cookies, but if you’re interested in making something different and new follow along with us!
You’ll need:
- Half a stick of butter
- Brown sugar
- Corn syrup
- Candied ginger
- Sliced almonds
- Flour
- An orange
- 6 ounces (1 1/2 bars) of baking chocolate
- White chocolate chips
For the cookie batter, place your butter, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons of corn syrup into a pan and warm over medium heat, stirring frequently for about 2 minutes until the brown sugar and butter are melted together into a sauce. Take the pan off the heat and add in 1/2 cup of almonds, 1/3 cup of flour, and a large pinch of salt. Zest your orange in, then chop up your ginger and add in 1/2 cup of ginger slices, and stir everything together. Now line two baking sheets with parchment paper and portion out scoops of batter that are about one tablespoon each. Place these scoops 3 inches apart on the parchment paper, so you get 8 cookies per sheet. Wet your fingers and press each piece of cookie batter down into a small circle.
Bake at 350°F for 5 minutes, then switch the baking sheets from the top to bottom oven racks and spin them back to front to bake for another 5 to 6 minutes until they’re browned.
Once the cookies are cooled, break up your chocolate into pieces, place these into a bowl, and microwave for 20 seconds. Stir the chocolate around and microwave for another 20 seconds, stir again, and microwave for a final 20 seconds – by this time you should have a melted and smooth chocolate dip. Measure out 1/4 cup of white chocolate chips into another bowl and microwave in the same way until the white chocolate is melted as well, then gently dollop about a third of the white chocolate into the melted chocolate and use a chopstick to make a swirl pattern of the two chocolates.
Stick one end of each florentine into the swirled chocolate and carefully press the top side downward, so about half the cookie’s top gets coated in chocolate. Place back onto your baking sheets to let the chocolate firm up, and repeat this process with each florentine. Set the cookies in a cool place to dry – you can even put them in your fridge or freezer – and once the chocolate is fully hardened they’re ready to eat!
These turned out to be really unique cookies, and we’re glad we got to try them for the first time – with the almond, candied ginger, and orange zest they some out crunchy and very flavorful. We’ll admit we were a little skeptical after mixing up the cookie batter, since it didn’t look like dough for any cookie we’d ever made before, but they came out really tasty and cool-looking: dipped in a swirl of white and regular chocolate makes them super interesting and adds a nice contrast to all the other tastes wrapped inside these cookies. So if you’re ready to step outside the box of your usual Christmas treats, these florentines are a great way to bake up something new.