I don’t remember when my mother first started baking these cookies. It wasn’t when we were kids. She has always been an outstanding cook, but, back then, being also ahead of her time when it came to healthy eating, not a champion of sweets. My sister and I had a wary, running joke that when Mum did bake, there was sure to be wheatgerm (that icon of 1970’s health food) lurking in the batter. I’m grateful for all of that now, of course, but I’m also grateful that, at some point, after we’d grown up and our metabolisms were no longer her responsibility, her stance on sweet things softened somewhat; she discovered this recipe and made it part of her Christmas tradition to bake these perfect (in my opinion) shortbread cookies, which are made especially tender by the use of almond flour and are not too sweet (of course).
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
Cream together:
2 cups soft butter
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract OR 1 tsp almond extract
(The almond flour provides a subtle, mellow almond flavour on its own. Use the almond extract only if you like a more intense, marzipan-like taste.)
Add and incorporate:
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups almond flour (ground almonds)
If the dough is very soft, chill it in the fridge for half an hour or so, or until it’s firm enough to shape easily.
When it is, using about two teaspoons of dough at a time, form log shapes approximately 2 inches long; place these on parchment-lined baking sheets and then gently bend them to form a curve. (You don’t, in fact, want these to be true crescents, which are wider in the middle than at the ends, as this would result in different rates of cooking, with either the thinner parts burning or the thicker parts being undercooked. They should actually look kind of like fat slugs, with rounded ends)
Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for approximately 35 minutes and then dust with confectioner’s sugar, if you like.
