Baking and Sewing

 Tonight we have been invited to a beloved cousin's for Shabbat dinner. Yes, I am bringing two challot. last night I asked if I could bring anything else. This morning my cousin texted that her beloved loved the almond cookies I had made for the High Holidays.

My first thought was ,"What almond cookies?". Then I remembered that I had added almond flour to whipped egg whites and topped each cookie with a whole almond. My youngest, ( tree nut allergic) will be at dinner too. I am not interested in killing him so I also needed t create a nut-free option for him.

So this is what I did.

I separated four eggs and put the whites into my big yellow Pyrex bowl. I added a pinch of salt to give the egg whites a bit more structure. Since there are four egg whites I have a cup of sugar at the ready. You need 1/4 cup of sugar per egg white. It is easier to separate cold eggs just out of the fridge but egg whites beat up more impressively if they are at room temperature. So separate your eggs and then go do something else for a while.

My plan was to beat up all of the egg whites and sugar  then separate some  and bake them as meringues. Meringues, in my opinion, are better studded with goodies. this time the goodies is a mix of roughly  chopped white and dark chocolate.

How much exactly is in the bowl??? Something less than a cup.

I pre heated my oven to 320. I like my meringues to be chewy and not the texture of Styrofoam.

I beat up the egg whites until they were foamy and then started adding sugar a bit at a time as I continued beating. I have a little hand held mixer and not a powerful stand mixer.

Once the egg whites look like shaving cream from a can add some vanilla. I use this particularly fragrant vanilla.

Of course I didn't measure, but I put in this much.

I separated about half of the egg white mixture and added it to the bowl of chopped chocolate and then put the batter onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and baked until firm to the touch.

I didn't want to contaminate the no-nut meringues with almond oils so I waited until the meringues were baked before putting the almond cookies in the oven.

To make the almond cookies:

I pulled the bag of almond flour that I had purchased for Passover from Costco out of the freezer. 

I added almond flour to the egg whites by the cup-full. I added the almond flour until the mixture looked somewhat softer than Toll-house cookie dough. How many cups is that??? It was more than I would have expected--- it may have been four--or more.

I also added a little bit of orange extract from this ancient bottle. It may or may not still be potent enough to give some flavor.

I topped each cookie with a whole almond and baked until the outer shell seemed firm

I baked them at 320 but probably could have baked them at a higher temperature. You could probably substitute the almond flour for pecan or hazelnut flour and have an incredibly delicious cookie. Pignoli cookies are made the same way but with some  ground pignoli added to the cookie dough. I am sure that all all pignoli cookie is heavenly but even at Costco prices insanely expensive to make. At the other end of the cost spectrum you can add bread crumbs to the whipped egg whites and probably add another flavor with grated citrus rind.

Although i am no longer really ill with Covid, it has sapped my strength. So there are days when I can write a post, and days when I can work but usually I can't do both on the same day. So there is work that I have gotten done but haven't managed to post about. So a wrap up of the missing sewing follows.

I finished mending this tablecloth and my client was happy with my work. Hurray!

I finally finished the making of this dress that will be worn to a wedding in February.

This dress is yet another example of a half finished dress that I had abandoned because it had seemed like a disaster only to somehow look  not terrible or at least the path to completion seemed like it was possible to manage. I don't know if elves fixed the dress in the intervening years or if  am smarter about garment construction or if  a few years just gave time for a possible workable solution to emerge.

I began construction on this tallit.

I don't actually have time to do a whole lot of narrative about it---that will have to wait for another time.

This song has been my ear-worm all week.

With the latest news coming out of Israel it seems appropriate.

Shabbat Shalom!