These Flourless Almond Cookies from Spain are almost too good to be true. They're gluten free, dairy free, and they take just 4 ingredients and 25 minutes to make. And they're totally delicious.
Cooking Light has a terrific cookbook called Global Kitchen. The book is filled with healthy and delicious recipes from all around the world - a book after my own heart! As I paged through, these flourless Spanish almond cookies caught my eye.
I have to admit that the first thing that attracted me to them was how healthy they are. There's no butter or flour - they're made mostly from almonds.
They bake up crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, with a fresh nutty flavor and a hint of lemon.
Spain is one of the worlds largest almond producing countries and desserts made with almond flour are common.
Almond flour is simply blanched almonds, with the brown skin removed, that are finely ground.
Once you grind the almonds for 20 seconds or so, add the egg, sugar, lemon zest and salt, and pulse until you get a sticky dough.
These flourless almond cookies are also great if you happen to be eating gluten free, dairy free, or if you're looking for a sweet treat for Passover.
I hope you enjoy the cookies! For more delicious, lightened-up recipes from around the world, here's the link to Cooking Light Global Kitchen on Amazon.
For more delicious varieties of flourless almond cookies, check out my post: A Trio of Flourless Almond Cookies
Now here's the recipe for Flourless Almond Cookies from Spain. If you try this recipe I hope you'll come back to leave a star rating and comment. I'd love to know what you think!
PrintRecipe
Spanish Almond Flour Cookies
- Total Time: 26 mins
- Yield: 24 1x
Description
Delicious crunchy nutty almond cookies that are made mostly from healthy almonds. Naturally gluten free and dairy free.
Ingredients
- 2 cups blanched slivered almonds
- ⅔ cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- Zest from 1 lemon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 24 roasted salted almonds to top cookies (or use any type of almond you like)
Instructions
- Set an oven rack in the center position. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Lightly oil a baking sheet.
- Put almonds in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the chopping blade. Process for 15-20 seconds or until they are finely ground. Add the sugar, egg, lemon and salt to the bowl of the food processor and pulse 20-25 times, until the mixture becomes sticky and holds together.
- Make 24 dough balls. Pull out about a tablespoon of dough at a time. Squeeze it and roll it. Spread balls out evenly on prepared baking sheet. Press a whole roasted almond down into the center of each cookie.
- Bake in the center of the oven for 16 minutes. Cool cookies on pan for 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 16 mins
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: Spanish
Albert Bevia
These are fantastic! easy to make and loaded with a great almond flavor
Lisa
I'm glad you enjoyed them!
nina mayer
Fantastic AND easy!!! I ended up making a second batch of these yesterday only a few hours after the first because we ate too many--and needed more to bring to our hostess last night!
Kristina
I love the Global Kitchen cookbook and I LOVE these cookies! this is a childhood favorite, I need to make soon...
Maggie
Can you tell me how much almond flour is required (instead of grinding almonds myself)
Lisa
Maggie, the recipe calls for 2 cups of slivered almonds, which is 8 ounces. 8 ounces of almond flour is about 2 1/4 cups.
Nick
My apologies to the poster of the recipe (Lisa) for the so-called humans who have posted the really stupid and self-centred (almost pathologically so) replies about choc-chip and shortbread. Your recipe sounds nice and I am going to try it, using Stevia instead of sugar (diabetic).
Lisa
Thanks Nick. I hope you enjoy!
Ben
This is an awesome recipe. I've tried it with a number of variations--my favorite so far being adding 2 tbs fennel seed.
Thank you for sharing!
Lisa Goldfinger
Thanks Ben. I love the idea of the fennel!
Erika
You saved my day!! After a disastrous lemon cake failure I needed a replacement recipe just hours before a party. I whipped these up in a hurry, using almond meal instead of slivered almonds (it was all I had in the pantry) and they came out just perfectly. I put a dollop of the leftover lemon icing from the ill-fated cake into the middle of the cookie instead of the whole almond, and it worked a treat.
Thanks for sharing this simple, delicious cookie. I'll be bookmarking it for another event!
Lisa Goldfinger
Wow,Erika - so great that you were able to pull off a successful dessert in such a short time! I love the idea of the lemon icing in the middle of the almond cookies!! 🙂
Kerry Clark
Great recipe, cute little cookies. I am going to put in more lemon rind, and less sugar next time. Thank you very much for your low fat recipe.
Kerry
Bryan E.
Thanks for the giveaway… we are on a continuing quest to tweak our oatmeal-coconut-pumpkin cookie recipe.
Mindy
My favorite cookie recipe is a chocolate chip cookie with a secret ingredient: molasses! Yum.
Kristen D.
my favorite cookies are snickerdoodles!
M. Sun
Trying to enter the cookbook giveaway but all its been doing is loading for the last 15 min. Tried twice. Says there are still five hours before contest closes. Oh well
Samantha
I am an old-fashioned Chocolate Chip Cookie gal!
MARIA simon
I love homemade choc chip cookies and you can actually make them a bit healthier by adding pumpkin instead of the eggs 🙂 comes out very moist thanks
Candie L
I do not have any healthy recipes to share but I love peanut butter cookies. THank you
Sand
I love pizzelles.