Moroccan Almond Cookies

Also known as Chopped Almonds Ghribas...

Three-day weekends are the best – especially when the holiday falls on a Monday. When you have a Monday off, you get your normal weekend, and then you get an extra day to do all the things you didn’t fit in and don’t have time to do every weekend! I’m very happy we have Family Day in Ontario now – although this year, I realized that due some sort of federal and national exceptions, some of my friends did not have Monday off, which isn’t really fair...  

I spent my Family Day with both my family and some friends. I saw my friend Hilary, who I baked these Moroccan Cookies, or Ghribas, with. Hilary was in Morocco over Christmas, where she sampled a variety of pastries and came back with a Moroccan Pastries cookbook. As soon as she told me about her cookbook, I was eager to try out one of the recipes with her – and as you will see, we had to make a few modifications on the original recipe, but our cookies turned out quite well regardless! Ghribas are a Moroccan, macaroon like cookie that have a ground nut in it. We chose to make an almond ghriba.

Here is the original recipe as taken from the cookbook, Moroccan Pastries:

Chopped Almonds Ghribas (the original recipe):

500 g poached and peeled almonds

1 pinch gum Arabic powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon butter

3 eggs

250 g icing sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Decoration:

egg white

200 g chopped almonds

Method:

Mix almonds and combine with gum Arabic powder, baking powder, butter, 2 egg yolks (preserve whites), 1 egg, icing sugar and grated lemon zest.

Shape little balls with almond paste; dip them into egg white then into a bowl of chopped almonds. Place them onto greased tray and bake in preheated and moderate oven. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 C.

And here's how they look in the cookbook...

Our version of the recipe:

(In addition to the modifications we made, we also tried our best to one-third the recipe – unfortunately, fractions were never my strongest math unit, so we may have also done a bit of rounding…)

165 g of almonds, blanched and peeled

1/3 tsp baking powder

1/3 tsp butter

2 eggs 

80 g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Decoration: 

egg white

chopped almonds

Our Method:

1. Hilary looked at a deli and Noah's for the gum Arabic powder, but neither carried it. So we made the executive decision to go ahead and bake the cookies without any gum Arabic powder. Gum Arabic powder is a binding agent or emulsifier - but luckily for us, our cookies managed to stick together without it! 

2. The original recipe calls for "poached almonds" - we weren't sure what this meant and a quick google search did not help us either, but then after some careful thought we decided this probably meant to blanch the almonds. To blanch almonds, boil water and drop the almonds in for one minute. Drain the almonds, and pinch the ends to easily remove the peel. 

3. Through reading the rest of "Moroccan Pastries" we came to realize that "mix almonds" in fact means puree/grind the almonds. We used a food processor to make an almond flour substance. Allow almonds to cool before blending in a food processor. Reserve some almonds for decoration, which should be chopped instead of blended.

Note: It's easiest to use a scale for this recipe - but if you don't have one, it's a 2:1 ratio for the almonds to the icing sugar

4. Combine the ground almonds, baking powder, butter, 1 egg and the yolk of the second egg, the icing sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl. Mix until combined. Reserve the egg white in a separate, small bowl.

Note: the dough was very sticky and a lot more wet than your average cookie dough - more like a cake batter. 

We used vanilla extract instead of lemon zest, because we didn't have a lemon to zest - but the vanilla compliments the almond flavour very nicely. 

5. To decorate, form dough into 1-inch balls, then dip in egg white and roll in reserved, chopped almonds.

6. Bake in 180 degrees Celsius, which to save you looking up the conversion, equals about 355 degrees Farenheit for about 12 minutes, or until edges of cookies are golden brown. 

These ghribas are surprisingly light and fluffy, while still remaining chewy. They reminded us of a macaroon – although a bit different in texture and taste. The almond flavour is very strong, but not in your typical almond extract kind of way - a delicious almond taste, as long as you like almonds. The cookies aren't too sweet either.

Almond Ghribas paired with Moroccan tea glasses

I hope everyone has enjoyed their four day work week!


Happy Eating!
- Caroline