Pignoli (almond macaroon cookies)

from the Touch Family Recipes

			       Pignoli
			      Joe Touch

These cookies are chewey almond macaroons, typically available in
Italian coffee houses, and sometimes coated entirely in pine nuts
(pignoli, thus the name). A dessicated version is available from
a famous liquer company (Amaretto diSaronni?), in square red tins
with a circular yellow, white, and black logo. The recipe is my
mother's, but there's no real history associated with it. I think
she found it somewhere. Mostly made near Christmas.

This recipe is a little different than most on the net I've seen -
most others use only egg whites or omit the flour or baking powder.
I definitely recommend this version - it's much lighter.

Ingredients:

	1 pound almond paste	I get mine from a local Italian market.
				It's like stiff PlayDough - not soft
				like toothpaste, like you find in
				those silly little tubes in the
				grocery. Make sure it's fresh, too.
				It should be heady with aroma.

	1 egg			I use extra large.
	1 egg white
	
	1 1/2 C powdered sugar	FYI, you can make some of this with
				granulated sugar in the blender, as I
				had to recently when I ran out of powdered.

	1/2 C flour		

	1 tsp. baking powder

	pignoli			A.k.a. pine nuts. They don't really
				taste like much, and they can be hard
				to find. But if you can't get them, 
				just skip that part. Don't use almonds
				(that'd be silly) or any other nuts.

	granulated sugar	To roll them in. 1 cup is more than enough.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Don't worry about greasing the pan - 
the almond paste has enough oil to kill a horse.

Bring the almond paste to room temp. If it's dry, grate it on a 
very coarse grater (the one with the 1/4" holes), or add a _small_
amount of water (or better, some Amaretto liquer) to bring it back
to life. Fresh paste won't need anything, though. 

You can run this part through a mixer (a KitchenAid with the paddle,
not the hook), but make sure it's heavy-duty.

Mix in the egg and egg white until incorporated. Add in the powdered
sugar, flour, and baking powder. 

If the mix is soft, chill it in the refrigerator at this point, about
1/2 hour.

Shape into 3/4" balls. Either:

	- press 3 pignoli nuts into a star in the top, then
	  roll in granulated sugar

	- just roll in granulated sugar

	- roll the _top half_ in pignoli (not the entire ball!)

Place on a cookie sheet. These balls will 'melt' down, like similar
balls of chocolate-chip cookie mix would, so keep some distance (4 on
the short side, 5-6 on the long). 

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. The cookie should be golden; lighter is
better than darker, though. Let cool PART WAY, then dislodge them from
the pan with a spatula. Do this before they cool all the way; at that
point, they're brittle, and will shatter.

Makes 45-60 cookies, depending on how big your 3/4" is :-)

Eat with cappucino (of course!), or as a garnish on vanilla ice cream.