Now normally I am not much of a baker, but I do love my cookies, especially cookies with wild ingredients, like these pine nut cookies.
You’ll notice a little bit of rosemary in these cookies, which can seem weird. It itsn’t. The combination of pine nuts and rosemary is a natural: pine and pine, as rosemary’s resiny, piney nature works well with the nuts.
If you want to add to the “wild” feel of these cookies, add a just a little acorn flour, too. Why? I like the whole-grain flavor you get with the flour, plus its added color and nutrition — and I like the fact that our local pine nuts grow right next to the oak trees I got these acorns from.
You can use any other darker flour and it will work just fine. Spelt, chestnut, whole wheat… you get the point.
You need to let the dough rest a while if you do use whole grain flours, though, as they need a while to hydrate. Two hours would be minimum, I’d say, and I made one batch of these cookies three days after making the dough and they were fine.
These pine nut cookies will be chewy when they come out of the oven, like chocolate chip cookies, but will crisp up as they cool. You can store them a few days at room temperature, but they never last that long here.
Most people making this recipe will use store-bought pine nuts, and while it can be difficult to find them, I highly recommend seeking out Italian Pignoli Nuts
, which are of better quality than the Chinese pine nuts you usually find. If you live in the West, here’s a guide on how to gather your own pine nuts.
Pine Nut Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary (optional)
- 2/3 cup sugar, or light brown sugar
- 10 ounces almond paste, or acorn paste (see above)
- 1 cup pine nuts, toasted (4 ounces)
- 1 egg white (maybe 2, see below)
- A pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.
- Buzz the sugar, 1/3 of the pine nuts and rosemary together in a food processor until you get small bits of pine nuts and rosemary sugar. Don't process into a paste. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the almond or acorn paste, salt and egg white. Mix into a paste. You want this to be wet but workable. Sometimes you need a second egg white.
- Option 2: Start with the 2 egg whites and, if you need it, add a tablespoon or 3 of all-purpose flour so you can form balls with your hands. I prefer this, but the cookies will no longer be gluten-free.
- Divide the dough into 12 to 16 pieces - or about a heaping tablespoon per cookie - and roll with moistened hands. Gently set a cookie ball onto the whole pine nuts, rolling to coat. Set the cookie on the baking sheet. If rolling the dough in the pine nuts proves difficult, you can set pine nuts on top of each cookie after it's on the baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies for 15 to 18 minutes, until you see just a bit of browning. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then dust with confectioner's sugar if you want to. Move them to a rack to cool thoroughly. They should keep in an airtight container for 3 to 4 days.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
