Ladies' Kisses Berets

On February 13th I tried out my first recipe: Ladies' Kisses!
(Or, with a tweak to the recipe, a creation I like to call Ladies' Berets!)

You can see a few Ladies' Kisses in the back there

I wasn't quite as successful as I'd hoped to be with my first experiment, but hey, I'm learning!

To say the least, I had a lot of issues.

1) The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of flour, but even after I'd only added 1 1/4 the dough was really dry and crumbly. I suggest only going up to 1 cup, and then judging for yourself from there.

2) I was supposed to be able to roll 40 balls with the dough, but ended up only having 26. Basically, I made them twice as big as they were supposed to be, but I didn't want to start all over again so I just left them.

3) The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate, aka regular chocolate chips, aka a very bland flavor. I think next time I'll spring for some fancy Dove milk chocolate or something.

4) I missed the page in the book that calls these (and other cookies in the section) "Teatime Treats."

These are more like cookies meant to accent a nice cup of tea, and on their own are a little on the plain side.

After I had the cookies all baked and the chocolate melted, I ran into my problem from earlier: A single cookie twice as big as it should be leads to a sandwich cookie that someone can only eat if they're able to unhinge their jaw.

So after making three gargantuan Ladies' Kisses, I decided to get creative and added chocolate to the top of a cookie, but left it as is instead of making it a sandwich cookie.

Hence, the Ladies' Berets!

Most adorable, if I do say so myself!

Ladies' Kisses Recipe:
Note: This dough has to be chilled for awhile-- Take that into account before starting! I didn't, and didn't finish them until 11:30pm.

• 10 tbsp softened butter
  
• 1/2 cup sugar (The recipe calls for caster sugar, but I used regular granulated since they don't carry it at my local grocery store)


• 1 egg yolk


• 1/2 tsp almond extract


• 1 cup ground almonds


• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (And I suggest even less, just to be safe)


• 2 oz semi-sweet chocolate (This is an absurdly small amount of chocolate. A bag of chocolate chips is 12 ounces.. I think I melted 6 oz and I only had a little leftover. The more chocolate the better!
  

Dough Preparation:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together. (Make sure to get extra sugar from the bottom of the bowl-- I had a LOT of sugar that didn't want to blend in)


2. Beat in the egg yolk, almond extract, and ground almonds.


3. Beat in the flour. (I always save the flour for last to make sure everything else is mixed in properly.)


4. At this point the dough should be nicely lumped together.


5. Chill for 1.5 to 2 hours
   

This is where you get to read a book or watch TV or knit that afghan that you never got around to before.

Baking Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F
   
2. Break off bits of dough and roll into balls. (Note: The ones I rolled were the size of a walnut, and I only got 26 balls. If you want to make the actual sandwiches, go much smaller!)


3. Place on a cookie sheet a little ways apart. They spread, but not much. Just give 'em space!


4. Bake for 20 minutes or until they start to get light brown. (My oven heats hot so I only baked them for 16, and they were perfect.)


5. Immediately remove from the pan and place on cooling racks. And, well, let them cool.

Filling Instructions:

1. Melt the chocolate, either using a double boiler or (my preference) the microwave.


2. Spoon chocolate onto the flattened side of the cookie.


3. If you did smaller cookies, put the flattened side of another cookie on top of the chocolate. If you did larger cookies, you're done!
   

Be sure to have a glass of milk ready, and enjoy!