Florentine Cookies

Thin, crispy, nutty and chocolaty florentine lace cookies, right from your oven

Ready to learn how to make these perfectly crispy and thin almond cookies, drizzled and sandwiched with delicious chocolate? Oh yes, you can bake these florentine too! These are quite easy to make and they only require a few ingredients. But they are very delicate, so please follow these suggestions.
Make sure the cookies are completely cool before removing for the parchment paper. And when they are cooling down, they need to lie perfectly flat, so they will keep their shape. Also, when storing the cookies, leave some parchment paper in between layers. I learned from experience: the first time I bake these, I didn't have time to do the chocolate part right away, so I put them all (very flat) in a sealed container, but no paper in between the cookies. So the next day when I finally found the time to melt the chocolate and decorate the florentines, they were all stuck together. In one big lump. I carefully tried to separate single cookies, and I was successful only with few. Most of the florentines broke in pieces. What a disappointment!! Note: that did not stop me from eating them. Not pretty to look at, but still delicious!

Ingredients: to make 10 large (3 inches) sandwich cookies.

• 1.5 cups (180 gr) of almonds, chopped
• 2 tablespoons of all purpose flour
• zest of one orange
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup (100 gr) of sugar
• 6 tablespoons (85 gr) of unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup (75 ml) of whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 8 oz (225 gr) of semisweet or milk chocolate chips

Preparation time: about one hour
Directions: 
1. Preheat the oven to 350º F (175º C). Chop the almonds in a food processor. Stir with the flour, salt and the orange zest.

2. In a sauce pan add the whipping cream, sugar, honey and the butter cut in pieces. Bring to a boil over medium heat stirring until the sugar and the butter dissolves. Stir and boil for one extra minute. Don't skip this part, make sure you wait a whole minute!

3. Remove for the heat and add the vanilla extract. Pour into the almond mixture and combine.

4. Wait about 10 minutes for the dough to cool down a little bit. Spoon the cookies onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Make sure the parchment paper lies completely flat! I used one tablespoon per cookie, which will give you cookies about 3 inches in diameter. Leave enough space around each cookie. Bake for about 12 minutes until deep golden brown on the edges.

5.  Let the cookie cool off completely before removing. These are very delicate and can easily break.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Add a little bit of water if necessary to make it a bit more liquid. Fill each cookie sandwich with the chocolate and sprinkle some on top if you'd like.

Let the chocolate set completely before eating... if you can!