Why do my amaretti fail?
September 14, 2022 2:56 PM Subscribe
Do you have an amaretti recipe that works consistently? I'm looking for semi-soft, mostly-crisp amaretti cookies that don't spread out but do stay as little mounds.
OK, so I used the recipe in the America's Test Kitchen cookie book which NATURALLY I don't have to hand, but the ingredients are: egg whites, almond paste, granulated sugar, and Amaretto liqueur. It's supposed to be piped onto the sheet and baked into cute little round cookies that don't spread much, brown evenly, and are hollow. This does not happen. First of all, the batter cannot be piped. It's basically a liquid. Even if I stiffen it up with stiff peaks in egg whites and a little cream of tartar (which makes the spreading worse?) Even if I chill it overnight. Second of all, even when I scoop little balls, it comes up as big, flat, thin rounds. Taste is good, shape is wrong.
I am not looking to make the store-bought kind that are 100% hollow and crisp, I am hoping for a chewier experience. But I definitely want them to be little mounds, not....half-assed tuiles.
I have looked at recipes on the internet but they all look wildly different from each other in terms of ingredients and method, but with the same results. So I can only figure there's some kind of trick to it that I don't know, or people are faking it. Is it almond flour? Is it some kind of leavening?
I know amaretti can be made at home because clearly they come from somewhere, so... Do you know how to make amaretti that are semi-soft/mostly crisp and consistently good? Can I have your recipe?
OK, so I used the recipe in the America's Test Kitchen cookie book which NATURALLY I don't have to hand, but the ingredients are: egg whites, almond paste, granulated sugar, and Amaretto liqueur. It's supposed to be piped onto the sheet and baked into cute little round cookies that don't spread much, brown evenly, and are hollow. This does not happen. First of all, the batter cannot be piped. It's basically a liquid. Even if I stiffen it up with stiff peaks in egg whites and a little cream of tartar (which makes the spreading worse?) Even if I chill it overnight. Second of all, even when I scoop little balls, it comes up as big, flat, thin rounds. Taste is good, shape is wrong.
I am not looking to make the store-bought kind that are 100% hollow and crisp, I am hoping for a chewier experience. But I definitely want them to be little mounds, not....half-assed tuiles.
I have looked at recipes on the internet but they all look wildly different from each other in terms of ingredients and method, but with the same results. So I can only figure there's some kind of trick to it that I don't know, or people are faking it. Is it almond flour? Is it some kind of leavening?
I know amaretti can be made at home because clearly they come from somewhere, so... Do you know how to make amaretti that are semi-soft/mostly crisp and consistently good? Can I have your recipe?
Best answer: For what it’s worth, I just clicked through the first 6 recipes on google on amaretti (with photos that have the style you describe) and all of them use almond flour rather than almond paste. One did talk about how grinding almonds at home for almond flour can make them release more oils and make them spread too much. I would try a new recipe or swapping out almond flour for the almond paste in the recipe you were using.
posted by raccoon409 at 6:35 PM on September 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by raccoon409 at 6:35 PM on September 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I baked amaretti last weekend, using this recipe that I have successfully used before.
Ingredients:
200g ground almonds (about 2 cups?)
2 egg whites
bitter almond flavor (extract)
100g granualted sugar (1/2 cup)
Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F).
Mix the ground almonds with 50g of the sugar, add bitter almond flavor. Beat the egg whites with the other 50g of sugar until you get firm peaks.
Then fold the mixture from above into the egg whites slowly.
Line a baking sheet with paper. Put little walnut-sized mounds of the dough on it. Using two teaspoons might help, the dough is quite sticky.
Bake for 15 minutes at 150°C (300°F), the turn the oven off and let them continue baking for one hour without opening the oven door. (I know this sounds strange, but it really does work!)
These amaretti are crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.
(Disclaimer: I used an online conversion tool to calculate the volume of the ingredients, I always use a scale.)
posted by amf at 1:56 PM on September 15, 2022
Ingredients:
200g ground almonds (about 2 cups?)
2 egg whites
bitter almond flavor (extract)
100g granualted sugar (1/2 cup)
Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F).
Mix the ground almonds with 50g of the sugar, add bitter almond flavor. Beat the egg whites with the other 50g of sugar until you get firm peaks.
Then fold the mixture from above into the egg whites slowly.
Line a baking sheet with paper. Put little walnut-sized mounds of the dough on it. Using two teaspoons might help, the dough is quite sticky.
Bake for 15 minutes at 150°C (300°F), the turn the oven off and let them continue baking for one hour without opening the oven door. (I know this sounds strange, but it really does work!)
These amaretti are crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.
(Disclaimer: I used an online conversion tool to calculate the volume of the ingredients, I always use a scale.)
posted by amf at 1:56 PM on September 15, 2022
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Also baking on parchment instead of a greased sheet can help reduce spread, but sounds like your problem runs deeper than that.
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:41 PM on September 14, 2022 [1 favorite]