During our many travels the last few months we ended up spending a quick weekend visiting family in Minnesota. It just so happened our visit coincided with a tasting event for their local Star Tribune's annual holiday cookie competition. We spent a great afternoon sampling delicious cookies, and got to leave with new recipes in hand, and it was great seeing some new variations on old holiday classics. The winner this year were these tasty Italian almond cookies - little soft balls of almondy, lemony deliciousness rolled in powdered sugar.
A few things drew me to this recipe... I find that without outside guidance my baking sometimes gets repetitive, alternating between chocolate, peanut butter, and chocolate and peanut butter, sometimes mixing it up with some caramel... Not that any of my taste testers (friends), complain, but its still nice to mix it up. This recipe provided a nice alternative to the classic chocolate chip cookie. I also liked that this recipe is a similar base to the macarons I'm obsessed with making, but much easier to make. I had just brought back some fresh cinnamon from a vacation to Zanzibar last week, so I rolled some of the cookies in a cinnamon/sugar mixture instead of the powdered sugar called for in the original recipe.
