You were right, those of you who suggested making soft almond biscuits with egg whites rather than the whole egg.
I am stubborn, though, and prideful, and attached to my “coat-on” soft almond biscuits; the ones that have stepped in like an extra helping hand, providing puddings, presents, picnics and peace offerings. To make another sort would seem to betray them, and yet I had to remind myself that you can have more than one way of doing something.
It is true, whisked egg whites make for the most tender marzipan-hearted paste di mandorla, the sugar-coated, jewel-studded bling that fills the grass-fronted counters of Sicilian pastry shops, and sends puffs of icing sugar down the front of your T-shirt.
The recipe I followed comes from a book called Cucina Siciliana: Ricette, Sapori, Sagre (recipes, flavours and festivals), which I bought from a Sicilian bookshop in liquidation a few years ago. Slim, and with colours as intense as the food it promises, it’s one of the few books from which I want to make everything.
Like many Sicilian sweets, the recipe starts with almonds, which are rich in moisture and essential oils – both of which dissipate when almonds are ground and left too long in packets or jars. So if you can, make your own ground almonds. This is easily done by reducing blanched almonds to a fine flour in a food processor. If you peel them yourself, even better (I don’t).
I do a mixture of biscuit shapes. You could also do as the Sicilians and roll the balls in pine nuts or crushed pistachios, stud with glacé cherries or a curl of candied peel, or go full-on Liberace and use more than one decoration.
These are as much marzipan sweets as they are biscuits, with the egg white keeping them sticky and light, so they need careful cooking: 10-14 minutes at 170C (150C fan)/gas 3½, in which time they will have spread slightly, cracked at the edges and turned opaque with just a touch of the lightest gold on top.
The exact time will vary from oven to oven. In my fierce gas oven (the same one as Sophia Loren, according to her book In the Kitchen with Love – which is where the similarities end), I bake the biscuits on the middle shelf and keep a close eye on them, so they don’t catch on the bottom. These are not biscuits to walk away from – they require you to loiter nearby. When they come out, they will be soft, so let them cool before lifting on to a plate and dusting with more icing sugar.
Freshly made paste di mandorla are well matched with cherries. Ideally, the cherries should be so cold that their skin is like a glass-fronted beer fridge and misty with condensation – a taut and fresh contrast to the marzipan-hearted sweet. For more symmetry, cherries have an almond-scented stone to suck on.
Well matched and also lovely to look at; a plate of icing sugar-dusted rounds and a big bowl of the reddest fruit, stalks up and waiting to be knotted. One of my favourite ways to swallow my pride and end a meal at this time of year.
Soft almond biscuits with cherries
(paste di mandorla)
Prep 20 min
Cook 12 min
Makes 25-30
300g blanched almonds
300g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
Zest of an unwaxed lemon
2 egg whites
Plain flour, to thicken (optional)
To decorate
Almonds
Cherry jam
Glace or fresh cherries
Heat the oven to to 170C (150C fan)/gas 3½. In a food processor, grind the almonds to a flour, tip into a bowl, then add the icing sugar and lemon zest.
Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks, add to the almond mix and bring everything together into a dough (hands are best for this). If it seems too soft and sticky, add a spoonful of flour.
Dust your hands with icing sugar and make balls by rolling walnut-sized lumps of dough between your palms.
To decorate, either press a whole almond into the centre of each biscuit, or make a deep indent with your finger and fill with a blob of cherry jam. Or, you can pinch them into a rough pyramid shape by pinching four sides of the biscuit to get a cross-shaped ridge. I do a mixture of all three.
Put the dough shapes, nicely spaced out so they have room to expand, on a baking tray lined with two layers of baking paper, and bake on the middle shelf for 10-12 minutes, or until they are lightly golden. They will still be soft when pulled from the oven, so leave them to cool completely, then lift on to a plate and dust with more icing sugar.
