chocolate-dipped almond crescent cookies

One of my favourite things about the Christmas season is baking family recipes.  No surprise there. Ha!  I know a lot of "Christmas-y" baking is often finicky and/or expensive, which is why it's such a special treat.  Now these cookies aren't particularly hard to make, but they do take quite a while.  There's dough chilling involved (oh the horror!), rolling out tiny pieces of dough, baking, and then dipping.  Did I mention that this recipe makes a million cookies?  You might be so sick of rolling and dipping by the end that you'll have to console yourself by eating all of the cookies!

But these are totally worth it, I promise!  The way they melt in your mouth is just divine, and the cinnamon sugar adds the most wonderful texture too. 

This recipe is one of my Grandma's, which means it's extra special when we make it.  She still has it on her baking trays, my mom and my aunt both bake it too, and I know that it'll be a recipe tradition that I'll carry on as well.  So, without further ado, here is the recipe for Almond Crescent cookies!

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Chocolate-Dipped Almond Crescent Cookies

recipe: Grandma Holloway
yields: approx. 50 cookies (depending on the size)

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, and ground almonds thoroughly.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour and salt.  Then, add to butter mixture, mixing until combined.

Cover dough with plastic wrap, and chill for about an hour.  This is to make the dough easier to roll out!

Roll dough into tiny logs about the length of your index finger, and the same diameter as a pencil, so pretty small!  (You can make them larger if you wish, although you may need to adjust the baking time accordingly.)  We used the method of rolling the dough into small balls to get the dough to come together nicely, and then rolled them into little logs. (See pictures below.)

In a small bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar.  Roll the logs around in the cinnamon and sugar mixture until well coated.  Gently bend each of the logs into a crescent shape, and place on a pan lined with parchment or a silicone baking mat.  

Bake at 325 degrees for 14-16 minutes.

If you want to dip your cookies, warm up your chocolate, and either dip each ends of each cookie into the chocolate and place onto parchment to set.  Or, place the chocolate into a ziplock bag, cut a very small hole out of the corner of the bag, and drizzle the cookies with chocolate.

Serve!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup ground almonds

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

[Optional]
Chocolate - for dipping

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Happy Christmas baking!

-Kelsey