"Kourambiethes"--Greek (or it GREED?) almond cookies

"I am a fool for explosively light, crunchy with nuts and powdery with sugar coating cookies with a lingering taste of butter."  
--Rose Levy Beranbaum

As you know, I am a member of a worldwide group baking through the latest cookbook by my favorite author, Rose Levy Beranbaum.  The book is entitled The Baking Bible, and the group is Rose's Alpha Bakers.  We started this two-year project in December 2014.  

It is such fun sharing the weekly progress with this diverse group of bakers, learning from one another, and I find so much in common with them...most of the time.

Then one (or more) of them will do something so crazy, so completely off the wall that I find myself saying, "what's WRONG with these people?!"

For example, two of the Alpha Bakers reported that they gave away this week's cookies because they were so good they didn't want them in the house!  WHAT?!  My world tilts off its axis when I hear things like this!!   

Usually, baking inspires a certain generosity in me.  I love having freshly baked goods to share....most of the time. 

Then there are recipes like this one.  Oh, the delicious treasure that we uncovered this week!  Cloaked in powdered sugar, kourambiethes are the Greek counterparts to Mexican wedding cakes and Portuguese snowball cookies.  

Unlike my CRAZY fellow bakers, I become greedy and reluctant to share.  Excuses spring to mind. "He probably doesn't even like almonds."  "I think I heard her say she's watching her cholesterol." "I just gave them something last week."   Yes, friends, if the ones who want the cookies out of the house are crazy, then this is the soundtrack of sanity!  

So add these cookies to the list of baked goods that tempt me to one of the deadly sins.  They are that delicious.

I made a double batch of cookies, so this is two pounds of clarified butter that has been chilled until solid and then unmolded onto a cutting board.  Incidentally, per Rose's suggestion, I saved the milk solids that I strained out of the clarified butter and added them to a batch of bread dough.  Delicious!

The butter is then cut into pieces.  Doesn't this look like Yukon gold potatoes?  

The butter is beaten with powdered sugar and in ten minutes it resembles a batch of stiffly whipped cream. Remarkable transformation!

The rest of the ingredients are added to the butter mixture.  Toasted chopped almonds are the most flavorful ingredient.  The dough is chilled before being shaped.   

Out of the oven, they are cooled on a rack and dusted heavily with powdered sugar.  They keep for a month at room temperature in an airtight container (yeah, right!  A couple of days, at the most!)  I wonder if the Tupperware container will fit into our little safe?!   Can't be too careful with these...

Kourambiethes--pronounced "koo-rum-BYEH-bthess"

Make thine own, dear reader, because I'm hoarding them!  


NEXT UP: ElderBlueberry Pie with berries from Norm's Farms in Pittsboro, NC!


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