Almond Butter Cookies

After dinner the other night J decided he wanted dessert.  I didn’t really have a lot in the pantry for baking so I was pretty limited on what I could make.  Peanut butter cookies is usually his first suggestion, and I have recently stopped buying peanut butter because too frequently was I just eating it straight out of the jar for no reason.  I did in fact have a rather large bag of almonds because I am never a good judge of volume when I buy things from the bulk section, so I thought I would try to make almond butter cookies, and I was really quite pleased with the result.

1 cup almonds
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a food processer blend the almonds until a creamy paste forms, about 6-8 minutes, scraping down the sides periodically.
In a large bowl, blend almond butter and butter together, then add the sugars and blend well.  Add egg and vanilla and blend well.

In a separate medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the almond butter mixture in 3 additions until just mixed.

Roll the dough into 1” balls and place a few inches apart on a greased cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until set but not hard.
Remove the cookies immediately from the hot cookie sheet to a wire rack to cool, they will dry out if they continue to cook on the cookie sheet.

Makes 24 cookies, 100 calories each

These cookies had crispy edges and chewy centers and had more the flavor of a rich, buttery sugar cookie than a peanut butter cookie.  I enjoyed them quite a bit, I will definitely be making them again.
I didn’t take any pictures because I was too busy eating them.