Festive Almond Kisses (Gluten-Free!)

Do you ever have bad kitchen days? You know, like a bad hair day but with cooking? Yesterday I had a bad kitchen day, but at least I was able to save the cookies.


These were actually supposed to be Almond Horns, but they ended up being little kisses instead. The recipe called for butter, and I was intent on veganizing them with coconut oil instead of Earth Balance, but for some reason the coconut oil was not nearly enough to keep the dough moist, so my dough had a whole 1/2 cup less flour than what was called for in the recipe. I have screwed up my baking and cooking so many times that I knew better than to go on with the recipe with so much flour missing, so I only baked one little horn-shaped cookie to test it out before I baked the whole batch. Aha! My test horn melted into a puddle of cookie and turned into a flat circle in the oven! That's when I knew that I definitely had to work more flour into the rest of my dough before I attempted to bake the rest of the cookies. In the end I had to add three tablespoons of water to the dough to make it workable. But the cookies were a success, don't you think?

I used this Almond Horns recipe from the Bob's Red Mill website which calls for their own Gluten-Free Flour Mix and almond meal. I doubled the vanilla extract and I added a teaspoon of almond extract. My coconut oil dough wasn't pliable enough to make horns and it kept breaking, so I started to make flat little buttons instead. They looked too boring, so I decided to roll them into balls and then pinch the tops to make little kisses.

Almond Kisses
So festive!

The cookies are so lovely! They are crunchy on the outside and buttery and crumbly on the inside. Not too sweet, but sweet enough. A little sprinkling of powdered sugar over the baked cookies gives them a beautiful festive look. You can of course drizzle melted chocolate all over your cookies instead, or even dip them whole in melted chocolate! Now I wish I had done that.

Almond Kisses
Does that look like a chocolate spider or am I seing that through my Halloweegan eyes?

Next time I will substitute the butter with Earth Balance instead of coconut oil, just to see if the dough needs any extra liquid. Or maybe that's just an excuse to make them again because I'm a glutton and these are so delicious! :)

OK. Cuteness time. Are my fellow Northern hemisphereans buried in snow yet? We're not quite buried here, but we are definitely walking in a winter wonderland. As are our little wild birds who are very happy to have access to seeds and nuts and water.

Snowy birds

Comments

  1. I've had my fair share of bad kitchen days, is there anything more frustrating? You were smart to test out one before baking them all, I'm not usually quite as smart. Kisses are better then horns anyway, especially when they're chocolate dipped :)

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    1. Bad kitchen days are the worst! Sometimes I just give up and eat whatever frozen leftovers might be lurking around in the freezer.

      I am SO dipping them in chocolate next time! It's unusual for me not to dip stuff in chocolate. What was I thinking? :)

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  2. I say, these Almond Kiss Cookies turned out PERFECTLY! Love the look - definitely great for the holiday season :)

    Not liking that spider-shaped chocolate drizzle though… EEK! haha.

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    1. Maybe I am just naturally creepy and even my chocolate drizzles are spooky! :P

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  3. Oh gosh, you look buried to me! Brr!

    The almond kisses totally make up for the snow though; and hooray for saving a recipe that might have been bound for disaster!

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    1. Baking definitely warms up the house, literally and figuratively too. There's something soul-warming about whipping up a batch of something delicious ini the kitchen when it's cold and blustery outside, isn't there?

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  4. "Horn" absolutely lacks the charisma of "kiss." I think you improved the recipe by changing the shape and adding a spider. I like the idea, though, of dipping just the tops into melted chocolate. As for kitchen mayhem, yesterday I turned a failed pie shell into chocolate-topped bars. Flexibility and good humor in the kitchen sometimes trumps perfection.

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    1. Hehe. Can't go wrong with chocolate spiders! :D

      Nice save! You are very right, sometimes the best treats are a result of a kitchen mishap. I hope you took pictures of your chocolate-topped bars to share with us!

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  5. For all the trouble they caused you, they sure do look adorable!
    No snow here! In fact air conditioning is sometimes happening.

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    1. I bet the kittehs are hogging all the cool air conditioner air, like all cats should do, of course.

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  6. Those are beautiful, especially drizzled in chocolate!

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    1. Even with the creepy spidery thing? I'll have to keep the creepy spidery drizzle in mind for next year's Halloweegan :P

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