Almond Creme Cookies

• Sometimes Homemade
• December 6, 2013
• No Comments

Almond creme cookies (also called Swedish Cream Cookies) are delicate pastry cookies with a great almond flavor. Make them in your favorite shapes and filling colors for any occasion.

There’s not much better in my opinion than a little almond in baked goods. My husband doesn’t really agree, but on this point I think I have to say he’s just wrong!  One of my favorite cookies from a local bakery, Nan’s Nummies are these amazing little almond creme cookies. My entire family loves them. I’ve finally figured out a recipe that seems pretty darn close to what Nan’s makes. This could be dangerous! These delicate pastry-like cookies are filled with almond butter cream frosting which is so good I may have piped some of the leftover frosting directly into my mouth!

I found a recipe that seemed close to what I was looking for from Food Pusher and then modified it to suit my tastes (and what I thought would be closer to the bakery’s cookies).

Makes about 40 cookies.

Almond Creme Cookie Ingredients

• 1 cup salted butter
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup cream
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (for rolling out), 1/4 cup granulated sugar (for dusting)

Almond Butter Cream Frosting Ingredients

• 1/2 cup salted butter (softened)
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon cream
• 3/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Mix flour, salt and baking powder together.Cut in the 1 cup butter until crumbly. Add in the half and half and form your dough into a ball.  Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Dust your counter or other surface and your rolling pin with flour. Take about 1/3 of your dough and roll out to about 1/8″ thickness. Use a small cookie cutter to cut out your cookies. Dip both sides of your cookie in granulated sugar (you could also use colored sugar). Repeat with remaining dough.

Place cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 7-9 minutes until the edges are barely brown. Cool cookies completely before frosting.
To understand the importance of this step, check out this Almond Creme Cookies recipe which highlights the technique to cool cookies completely.

For Frosting:

Beat your 1/2 cup of butter and then cream in powdered sugar. Add almond and vanilla extracts  and cream. You may need to add more powdered sugar or cream to get to a desired consistency for piping in. (you can also add food coloring at this step).

Put almond butter cream frosting into a piping bag with a medium or large size tip. Pipe frosting into bottom half of cookie and then add top cookie.

Don’t think I didn’t eat 4 of these for breakfast the morning I frosted them.

I normally don’t have the patience to make cut-out cookies, but these are so worth it. Nan’s Nummies‘ version will still be a special treat for me when I visit Valley Junction, but it’s nice to know I can make a close substitute if I want a batch to take to a family gathering or a party.