Amaretti almonds and lemon

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 24 pieces, you will need:

• 1 2 egg whites
• 2 2 pinches salt
• 3 200 g caster sugar
• 4 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 250 g ground almonds
• 6 ½ lemon
• 7 30 g caster sugar
• 8 30 g icing sugar
• 9 25 whole almonds
• Total weight: 715 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
35 min.	15 min.	50 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Pour 2 egg whites and 2 pinches salt into a large bowl and beat the egg whites until stiff.
2	Pour over 200 g caster sugar, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, 250 g ground almonds and the zest and juice of ½ lemon.
3	Mix by hand until smooth.
4	Cut the dough into 20-25 g pieces.
5	Roll the pieces between your 2 hands to form beautiful little balls, as regular as possible. Note: If you have children around, let them help you, as they'll love the "play dough" aspect.
6	Pour 30 g caster sugar into a shallow dish (or better still, a springform tin if you have one), and coat the dough balls with sugar, in packs of around 6, turning the dish on the spot. You want a very thin, even layer of sugar all over the dough ball.
7	Do this for all the dough balls. Preheat your oven to 170°C (340°F).
8	Then do the same with 30 g icing sugar.
9	Then roll the balls in your hands to remove the excess powdered sugar. Again, you want a very thin, even layer of powdered sugar all over the dough ball.
10	Do this for all the balls and place them on a sheet of baking paper (this is important), set on a baking sheet.
11	Place an almond on each ball, and press down with your fingers to flatten the ball a little and make it crack on the sides.
12	Do this for all the balls...
13	...and bake at 170°C (340°F) for about 15 minutes.
14	Cool on a wire rack and enjoy.

Remarks

It's very important to place the balls to be baked on a sheet of baking paper, as the amaretti are very sticky after baking.
In the original recipe, it's so much for so much sugar and almond powder, but in my opinion it's a little too sweet.
The vanilla extract can be replaced by 10g of vanilla sugar, to be subtracted from the powdered sugar weight.
The recipe can easily be adapted to a hazelnut version: hazelnut powder and hazelnuts on top.

---