Chinese New Year Almond Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups ground almonds
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup icing sugar (alternatively, use castor sugar)
220g lard (alternatively, use 1 cup corn oil)
pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten

Directions

Dry fry the ground almonds in a wide non-stick pan (over medium heat), until they start to become fragrant and lightly browned. Take care to make sure you do not burn the almonds, as it will impart an unpleasant burnt taste to your cookies.

If you don’t have ground almonds, you can use whole almonds (without skins), and pulse them into a fine powder after dry frying.

Place the ground almonds, flour, sugar and salt in a bowl, and mix with a spatula until well combined.

Using a pastry blender, incorporate the lard into the almond/flour mix, until you form a cohesive dough. A good guide is to try forming a ball from the dough – it should not crumble. You may need more or less oil/lard depending on the weather.

Alternatively, you can use a food processor for this step: place the almond/flour mix in the food processor bowl, add chopped cubes of lard, and pulse until it forms a cohesive dough. If using oil, trickle the oil in slowly whilst pulsing.

Heat the oven to 180′C.

Form the dough into 2cm balls, and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Press down lightly with a chopstick, this forms the indentation you see in the cookie. Alternatively, place a piece of slivered almond on the top of the cookie (after eggwashing though!).

Glaze lightly with the beaten egg.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until they turn a lovely shade of golden brown.