Ricciarelli

I am making Christmas hampers this year for people, so the next few posts are things that will be contained within them. I have to be able to send them across to the UK in one piece so they need to be hardy and able to stand the week or so they will be out of refrigeration, awaiting Christmas morning.

These Italian almond cookies are really simple and impressive. They're fun to make and are also gluten free. The only tricky thing can be finding the almond flour for them. I have a lovely Italian bakers nearby where I can buy this but health food shops should have it. Almond flour is more fine than ground almonds, so at a push, you can make almond flour from grinding blanched almonds in a food processor until they are very, very powdery.

Ingredients

2 cups almond flour
2 large egg whites
2 tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp bitter almond extract

For rolling you need an additional cup of icing sugar.

Preheat oven to 150C

Mix the almond flour, icing sugar, cornflour and baking powder together in a large mixing bowl.

Beat the egg white separately until they are stiff and fold them into the almond mixture.

Add the almond extract and stir until you have a soft dough. You should be able to pinch off a piece of the mixture and roll it into a fairly tight ball so if you feel your mixture is too soft, add extra almond flour.

Cover a clean worktop with a small pile of icing sugar.

Form one tablespoon of dough into a small ball, coat in the sugar, and flatten it out slightly so you have a lozenge shape.

Place the cookies on a baking sheet covered with a silicon baking mat. Just before placing in the oven, press a clean fork down in the middle of each cookie to create an indentation.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until light gold in colour. You don't want to over-cook these cookies as the joy of them is in the chewy texture.

The cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

Lemon Curd

This lemon curd is amazing and so easy! It adapts well to different fruit as well so there is no reason why you couldn't make lime, orange or even grapefruit curd!

It's also suitable for use in baking as well as on toast (or just eaten from a spoon)

The lemon curd comes out tart and not too sweet which is what I look for in a lemon curd, if you want it a bit sweeter you can of course add some more sugar.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons lemon zest (about 2 lemons worth)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (2 or 3 lemons)
1 1/2 cups sugar
8 tablespoons butter
2 whole eggs, lightly beaten
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten


In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar.

Bring just to a boil; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 5 minutes, you'll notice the yellow colour getting darker at this stage.

Add butter and stir until it has melted and combined. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Beat eggs into cooled lemon mixture until well blended.

Return to heat and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, 10 to 20 minutes or until mixture thickens and coats spoon (it usually takes about 20 mins for me to get the consistency I want, but just keep an eye on it).

Remove from heat.

Pour into prepped, clean jars (I put them in the oven on about 170C/350F while I'm stirring the eggs in as this sterilises the jars and means they don't crack when the hot lemon curd goes into them)

Seal the jars with the lids while hot, and allow to cool before putting into the fridge.

Store in the fridge for up to a month.