Almond Cardamom Cookies

These cookies are going down in my cookbook as one of the TOP 5 cookies made till date! I cannot pen down enough how much I enjoyed treating myself to one little cookie from the whole lot of 1 dozen cookies that I made this evening to serve mom and dad with tea, amazing little cookie it was! Just a few changes here and there which I made are: 1) I substituted the butter with margarine(I used 1/2 a cup). 2) I used 1/2 a tsp. of orange essence instead of the grated orange zest. 3) I totally missed the word "toasted" for the almonds, so, mine were not toasted, but yet, the cookies have come out so good. Also, I'd like to mention that since there was not too much margarine used in making the dough, I lightly greased my baking tray with margarine before baking the cookies. The cookies were done in 20 minutes. I allowed them to remain in the oven for 20 additional minutes, before removing them and allowing them to cool completely. Now its tea time and I can't just wait to serve them! THANKS SO MUCH, Erin, for sharing these. For those who are vegetarian, this is a sure good cookie to please one and all. I'd recommend this to every single person on the planet! Innumerable thanks to You, ERIN, Again n again :)

When I first blended the batter together I was worried that these were going to be awfully dry and maybe even flavorless like a lot of tea-time cookies tend to be. Not so! They have a wonderful flavor- I added about an extra 1/4-1/2 tsp orange zest. It's amazing how yummy they are and they're great with tea too. Not extremely moist or anything, but still quite tasty, sweet and with a very unique flavor. I would definitely recommend letting the cookies cool for a while before removing them from the sheet, they can crumble easily when still warm. I had a hard time rolling the dough into balls, however, disks, which would be easier to form would work equally well. The dough is so dry, however, that rolling it between your hands is not an option. I used 1/2 cup of butter and to apply the powdered sugar I rolled my cookies in some that I poured in a bowl as the sprinkled sugar did not seem to adhere. Overall, a great recipe for a flavorful teatime cookie. Very unique and delicious!

I just made two batches of these cookies. I love how easy they are, with very little clean up! The first batch I made with 1/2c. unsalted butter, slivered almonds, and an extra 1/2. tsp. orange zest. My dough wasn't dry at all, and although I rubbed the cookie sheets with the butter wrapper, I don't think they needed it as the cookies did not stick at all. For economical purposes, I did not use the powdered sugar, but they were still delicious. However, my mom thought they were not sweet enough without the powdered sugar, and I wanted them to have a bit of an end note when you tasted them, so I made another batch. This time I used whole almonds, brown sugar, and added 1/2tsp. black pepper (weird, I know, but I read about someone using that in cookies before, so I decided to try it). My dough was a little more crumbly, but still not too dry. They were a little more textured with whole almonds and didn't flatten out as much as the first batch did. Still delicious! Tomorrow I will try with cinnamon instead of pepper, though. Oh, and both batches were done in exactly 20 minutes. Thanks, Erin, for such an easy and delicious cookie!

The texture was great and the dough was very easy to work with. However, I felt that the cookies had very little taste to them. Next time I will add either almond or orange extract and some cinnamon.