Ingredients

1/2 lb almond paste
3 eggs
1/2 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Preheat the oven to 300 F.

Mix the flour and sugars thoroughly. Put the almond paste through a food processor until smooth. Separate the eggs. ‘Slightly’ beat the egg whites, per the recipe. There are three recognized stages of beaten egg whites: soft peaks, firm peaks, and stiff peaks. ‘Slightly’ is not one of them. I settled for beating the whites until they were white, foamy, visibly increased in size, but still did not form peaks at all. Add the egg whites to the almond paste and blend. Add the flour/sugar mixture.

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and butter it. (I actually use solid Crisco for such tasks.)

The recipe says that you may put small lumps of dough on the parchment with a cookie press or piping bag. I have never used a piping bag, and I thought the dough was too soft for a cookie press. I dropped teaspoonfuls off the end of a spoon.

Bake about 30 min, or until pale golden brown. As always, baking a few test cookies first to check for timing is advised.

Notes: 1) You can buy almond paste in many grocery stores, but I opted to make my own from a recipe on The Spruce Eats. It’s not hard. 2) I have stopped sifting flour. I consider this voodoo home economics. When flour is called for, I simply spoon it lightly into a measuring cup and level it with a spatula. Do NOT tap the cup. When a recipe calls for sifting dry ingredients together, I mix them well in a bowl, with a whisk. 3) These recipes are from 80 years ago, and some ingredients may not be readily available. For ‘fine granulated sugar’ I say sugar, for ‘powdered sugar’ I say confectioners sugar, for ‘pastry flour’ I say cake flour.

I have started using parchment paper on cookie sheets for recipes cooked at less than 400 F, but this is the only one for which the paper had to be buttered, or the bottom of the cookie remained on the paper. These cookies have no shortening in them.

The book suggests leaving all cookies on the pan for 2 minutes after removing from the oven, before moving to the cooling rack.

Results:

A lighter than air (almost), crisp macaroon, quite sweet, with a hint of almond flavor. These go quickly. A pleasant cookie, though to my tastes, somewhere in the middle of the pack in this group of eight. As usual, my cookies did not match the perfect photos in the book. In this case, my cookies mostly came out ovals, not perfect rounds. Perhaps I should seek enlightenment from a master of the piping bag.

Below: Gourmet’s photo of its cookies, and a photo of my results.