ffwD: Croquants

Woo-hoo! This is my first ffwD post in a long while, and I think I picked a good recipe for my return!

These four ingredient croquants (unskinned hazelnuts, sugar, egg whites, and flour) were easy to assemble after staying late at work Thursday night. However, it helped that I already had all of the ingredients in my cupboards! Now, after baking my first batch of croquants for the suggested 10 minutes, the cookies turned out very pale on top, had lightly browned bottoms and sides, and stuck to the parchment when I tried to lift them after they had cooled. They were also only slightly crispy on the outside and still chewy on the inside.

Because of these results, I baked the subsequent batches for 12 minutes each. The 12-minute bake produced nicely browned tops, sides, and bottoms and allowed for easy lifting from the parchment after cooling. For my oven, 12 minutes was obviously the way to go. As for the taste, these are extremely sweet (and crispy!) cookies, probably due to the one and a quarter cups of sugar to 1/2 cup of flour in the dough. Definitely serve these with hot tea to help mellow the taste and the texture!

As a hilarious side note, because it’s been such a long time since I’ve baked for a post, I was completely scatterbrained during my last three batches. For the first scatterbrain batch, I put the croquants in but forgot to turn on the timer. The second scatterbrain batch, I turned on the timer but forgot to put the croquants in the oven. For the last scatterbrain batch, I placed the croquants in the oven, turned on the timer, and somehow turned off the oven because it was the last batch. I ended up throwing those away. When I told my surgeon friend (Codename: Candelabra) about the three batches, she laughed and said, “I don’t even know what to say about that.”

These croquants were made for French Fridays with Dorie, a group of bloggers who are cooking their way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.