Before starting to make our dessert pastries, some important advice.

– It is essential that the butter, eggs, and heavy cream are at room temperature to avoid clumping. Remove them from the fridge at least an hour before preparing our cookies.

– Flour and powdered sugar should be sifted well before adding them to the other ingredients.

– I weighed the 2 eggs (yolks and whites together) without the shells. The final total weight turned out to be 120 grams.

– Line the two shallow baking trays, 16 x 12 inches, with parchment paper and place them in the fridge. To keep the paper in place while forming the cookies, we can slightly dampen the trays with water or butter them.

– The liquid cream (not whipped) should be added a little at a time. This is necessary because flours never absorb the same amount of liquids; therefore, I highly recommend adding the cream a little at a time to avoid ending up with a liquid and unmanageable dough.

– You can make the almond flour yourself, using a powerful blender and blending 50 grams of already chopped almonds (or hazelnuts) with half of the powdered sugar in this recipe. The sugar prevents them from releasing oil. You can also use hazelnut flour (made in the same way as almond flour); or you can use only all-purpose flour, and in that case, its weight will be 500 grams.

Preparing the pastries.

In a large bowl, pour the sifted powdered sugar and the soft butter cut into chunks.

Beat them with electric beaters for about 3 minutes on low speed, until obtaining a creamy and well-mixed consistency.
At this point, we can add the first egg, continuing to beat the mixture. Only after the first egg has been well incorporated will we add the second.

Using a spatula, first pour 150 milliliters of liquid cream, the sifted flours, flavors like finely grated citrus zest or vanilla paste, and the pinch of salt.

Mix well, then gradually pour in the remaining 50 milliliters of liquid cream until reaching a creamy yet compact consistency that can be placed in a pastry bag to form our pastries. It may be necessary to add a little less or more cream than the doses I have indicated.

Remove the trays from the fridge. Fill a pastry bag with a star tip (closed or open) like the one in the photo below.

Form cookies of various shapes and sizes (the smaller they are, the more we will get), spacing them a finger-width apart. At this point, we can decide whether to decorate them with nuts, such as pistachios, hazelnuts, or almonds (whole or chopped), placing them on top and pressing very gently on the freshly formed cookies.

To prevent the nut decorations from falling off the cookies after baking, lightly brush the cookies with a little unwhipped egg white before decorating them.

Once the trays are filled, return them to the fridge, in the coldest part, covered with parchment paper or plastic wrap, without pressing the surface of the cookies, and let them settle for at least an hour (or overnight, depending on our needs).

After the resting time, preheat the oven to 356*F.

When the oven reaches the temperature, bake the first tray at mid-height for at least 20 minutes (my oven is gas, static, with heat only from the bottom, and it took 20 minutes to bake them perfectly).

The dessert pastries should be golden but not too dark.

Remove them from the oven immediately and let them cool; then take out the second tray from the fridge and bake it at mid-height until fully cooked.

Let the pastries cool before dusting them with simple powdered sugar.

To make them even more delicious or decorative, we can glaze them with melted dark chocolate.

Once completely cooled, melt 3 1/2 oz of dark chocolate in a double boiler (sufficient quantity to glaze all the cookies; otherwise, just 1 3/4 oz is enough) in a not-too-high saucepan.

Take one cookie at a time and dip it halfway into the melted chocolate, letting the excess drip off with the help of a spoon or fork, and place the cookie back on parchment paper to dry. Continue until all the cookies are done.

I recommend preparing them the day before and letting them rest overnight (even outside the fridge if the season permits). The next day, they will be even tastier and more delicious.

Bon appetit