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Home » Sweet Things » Pine Nut Cookies

Pine Nut Cookies

By Hank Shaw on November 10, 2022 - 10 Comments

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4.89 from 9 votes
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Pine nuts are expensive, and should be celebrated when you have some. These pine nut cookies, pignoli in Italian, are just the thing. I make them with wild, American pine nuts, but you can use any kind of pine nut for this recipe.

A plate of pine nut cookies.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

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 isn’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. You can skip this if you want.

Almond Paste and Substitutes

Because these pine nut cookies are based on traditional Italian pignoli, they use almond paste as a base. You can buy almond paste online, in many supermarkets, or make almond paste yourself.

However, since I am a hunter-gatherer type person, I decided to substitute the almond paste in my pine nut cookies with homemade acorn paste. Yep, you read that right. You make it exactly like almond paste, only using acorn flour.

I have written a whole primer on eating acorns, as well as a specific recipe for acorn flour, if you want to go that route. This is how I make acorn paste, or almond paste, for that matter:

Breaking open a pine nut cookie made with acorn paste, showing the dark interior.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

You will need:

  • 1 1/2 cups of acorn flour or almond meal (140g)
  • A heaping 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar (70g)
  • A pinch of salt
  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix all this together well with a spoon or a food processor, and you have essentially acorn marzipan. Nifty, eh?

Technically marzipan, whether made from almonds or another nut, is much sweeter than almond paste. It’s also less important that the paste be super smooth, too; marzipan needs to be very finely ground.

The Nuts in Pine Nut Cookies

I use wild pine nuts for my pignoli, from our local pinon pines, Pinus monophylla. There’s another excellent pine nut pine tree, P. edulis, that grows in the Mountain West. You can also use our local Central Valley bull pine, P. sabiniana, which has tasty nuts, but the shells are harder to crack.

Here are primers on how to harvest pine nuts, and how to work with bull pine nuts.

Or, you know, you can buy your nuts for pine nut cookies, as most do. If by chance you can find real Italian pine nuts, pay the extra money. They’re tastier, and they will never give you that nasty “pine mouth,” you can get from fraudulent Chinese pine nuts.

That said, 99 percent of you will likely have to make do with Chinese pine nuts, so it’s a game of roulette. Pine mouth comes from nuts of a different species of pine from the regular Chinese nuts, and unscrupulous vendors have adulterated the good ones with the bad ones.

One recipe note: Toast your pine nuts in a dry frying pan over medium heat, tossing and stirring often, until they begin to brown just a little. Move them to a bowl so they don’t burn. Do not walk away from this process because pine nuts burn very easily.

A stack of pignoli on a plate.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Making Pignoli

Once you have all your ingredients, making pine nut cookies is pretty easy. Mix all the ingredients and bake.

There is one tricky bit, though. Sometimes the mixture is too wet, and you can’t realistically roll the dough into balls to roll in the pine nuts.

Two ways to fix this:

  • First, if you want your pine nut cookies to be gluten free, start with only one egg white. This will keep the dough a little drier and more rollable.
  • However, you really want lots of egg white in your pignoli because it provides a little bit of lift, and really helps prevent the cookies from falling to pieces. So I use 2 egg whites add a couple tablespoons of flour.

Once the pine nut cookies come out of the oven, let them sit for a few minutes to start cooling — they’ll be molten at first and you won’t be able to pick them up — then, once they have set, after about 5 minutes or so, dust with confectioner’s sugar and move to a cooling rack.

Store them at room temperature in a closed container for a few days while you eat them all. You can freeze pignoli, but I’ve always just eaten them all first…

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.

A plate of pignoli, pine nut cookies.
Print Recipe
4.89 from 9 votes

Pine Nut Cookies

These are simple pine nut cookies you can make with any sort of pine nut — I use American pinon pine nuts, or sometimes California bull pine nuts. I like using acorn flour, but you can skip it or use regular almond paste. See above for the acorn/almond paste recipe.  
Prep Time20 mins
Cook Time12 mins
Total Time32 mins
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American, Italian
Servings: 16 cookies
Calories: 171kcal
Author: Hank Shaw

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

If you happen to use marzipan, the additional sugar in it will make the cookies browner, so don’t pull them before 15 minutes. 

Nutrition

Calories: 171kcal | Carbohydrates: 18g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 11g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 4g | Monounsaturated Fat: 5g | Sodium: 5mg | Potassium: 109mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 15g | Vitamin A: 3IU | Vitamin C: 0.1mg | Calcium: 32mg | Iron: 1mg
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Filed Under: Appetizers and Snacks, Featured, Foraging, Italian, Recipe, Sweet Things

Avatar for Hank Shaw

Hank Shaw

Hey there. Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet's largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook.

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Comments

  1. Avatar for Pamela WestPamela West says

    December 1, 2022 at 10:01 am

    Anyway to do these without the sugar???
    They look beautiful and I want to try them.

    Reply
    • Avatar for Hank ShawHank Shaw says

      December 1, 2022 at 10:16 am

      Pamela: I haven’t tried. What other sweetener were you thinking of using? I mean, these are, basically, sugar cookies because the almond/acorn paste is like 50% sugar.

      Reply
    • Avatar for Pamela westPamela west says

      December 8, 2022 at 5:07 am

      Okay, back to the cookies…

      Perhaps these will be a ‘less sugar’ cookie, but let’s see…

      If I use maple syrup instead of the sugar, I have a liquid problem. But, consulting with a friend, perhaps a small amount of teff, very small, would balance this.

      P

      Reply
      • Avatar for Cat GundersonCat Gunderson says

        January 30, 2023 at 9:07 am

        Pamaela,
        I have found maple sugar (same consistancy as brown sugar) in natural food stores in tiny bags. That would solve the liquid problem from adding maple syrup.

  2. Avatar for MariahMariah says

    November 30, 2022 at 5:51 pm

    These cookies are amazing. Good thing too, since it took me HOURS to shell enough pinion nuts to make 1 cup.
    (Next time I will try a Paiute method for shelling them which involves toasting in the shell and then cracking the shells by rolling a mano over them then winnowing them to remove the empty shells).
    I used the two egg whites and since I am grain-free I used some coconut flour in place of wheat flour.
    I froze them and we are eating them slowly over time.

    Reply
  3. Avatar for ErinErin says

    November 18, 2022 at 5:40 am

    Highly recommend these. So easy to make almond paste and the cookies too. Great for dinner party and for breakfast ! Love your recipes and their history and tips for cooking. I am an experienced cook yet I have learned a lot from your posts. Thank you.

    Reply
  4. Avatar for Dave HedlundDave Hedlund says

    November 13, 2022 at 5:37 am

    Just made these yesterday. Very good! I like cookies that are dense and chewy. Great trail snacks.

    Reply
  5. Avatar for Ellen SmartEllen Smart says

    November 10, 2022 at 6:02 am

    Looks delicious, but a question : does this recipe make less than half a cup of dough? In step 4 do you mean a teaspoon? 12 to 16 teaspoons is about 5 tablespoons which is ¼ cup plus one tablespoon. Very small cookies, not like those in the pictures.

    Reply
    • Avatar for Hank ShawHank Shaw says

      November 10, 2022 at 7:51 am

      Ellen: Good catch, thanks! Yes, tablespoon.

      Reply
  6. Avatar for Porter H LansingPorter H Lansing says

    November 10, 2022 at 5:32 am

    Outstanding photos, Ms. Heyser – Thanks mucho 🙂

    Reply

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Hank Shaw holding a rod and reel in the American River

Hi, my name is Hank Shaw; I’m a James Beard Award-winning author and chef. I started this site back in 2007 to help you get the most out of all things wild: fish, game, edible wild plants and mushrooms. I also write cookbooks, have a website dedicated to the intersection of food and nature, and do a podcast, too. If it’s wild, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy the site!

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