Almond, Pistachio, and Sour Cherry Wafers

Updated on 25 June 2018. Make sure to read the last paragraph before making these.

Sorry, but you won’t see the last few photos of these cookies. At least not yet.  Probably sometime next week, though. The reason is that these are slice and bake cookies, and we prepared the dough with the idea of baking them on Monday.  Yep, for our fellow volunteers at the weekly walk/run we go to on Mondays. But, we will say that the picture in the cookbook was enough to have us try them out. That, plus we had everything we needed in house except the pistachios.

This recipe comes from Sweet, by Yotum Ottolenghi and Helen Goh, a cookbook devoted to, yes, you guessed it, sweets. We figured that, while we had it checked out of the library, we’d at least try one of the recipes, and this is it.

Print Recipe

5 from 2 votes

Almond, Pistachio, and Sour Cherry Wafers

Servings: 4 dozen cookies

Author: Shawn

Ingredients

• 400 g all-purpose flour (3 1/4 cups)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100 g unsalted butter (7 Tbs)
• 240 g dark brown sugar (1 cup + 2 Tbs)
• 70 g water (1/4 cup + 1 Tbs)
• 150 g whole almonds (1 cup)
• 90 g pistachios (2/3 cup)
• 100 g dried sour cherries (1/2 cup)

Instructions

• Line a loaf pan with baking parchment.
• Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a large bowl. Set aside.
• In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine butter, brown sugar, and water. Heat, stirring often, until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes.
• Add liquid mixture and almonds, pistachios, and cherries to the flour mixture and stir until all flour is moistened.
• Scrape into prepared loaf pan and press dough down firmly. Fold, or place another piece of, parchment over the top.
• Freeze loaf for several hours, until firm but pliable. (If desired, transfer dough to the refrigerator the evening prior to baking).
• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment.
• Slice loaf very thin, about 1/8 of an inch, and place slices on baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between each wafer. Bake for 10-14 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely on baking pans.

Ingredient discussion:

While the original recipe listed volume measurements first, it seemed that the recipe is truly based on weight measurements (a few volume measurements are a bit off), so we list, and made our recipe, measuring all the ingredients with a scale. We don’t think you’ll go far wrong in using volume, but we actually find it easier and faster to measure by weight. Dried cherries are probably the most expensive ingredient, even buying in bulk, but they taste so good, we had to use them. We use dried Montmorency cherries that we buy off the Internet.

Procedure in detail:

Line loaf pan. It’s not easy to line a loaf pan with baking parchment, but you know what? No one’s going to be checking on you for neatness, so, whatever you do will be fine. It’s there so you can pull out the whole block of dough later for slicing.

Sift dry ingredients. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. We find this is a nice time to use a scale. We can set our bowl with the sifter in place on the scale, press tare to reset the scale to 0, then scoop in flour until we reach 400 grams. Add the remaining ingredients and sift away. Done.

Make brown sugar syrup. In a small saucepan, combine butter, brown sugar, and water and place over medium-low heat. Continue heating until the butter is completely melted and the sugar is dissolved. It’s not necessary for the mixture to boil. As you stir, you’ll notice that much of the butter is mixing right into the sugar and water, forming an emulsion.

Mix. Pour the sugar mixture over the flour and add the nuts and cherries. Start stirring with a large spoon; the dough will be somewhat stiff, dry, and a bit crumbly. Continue stirring until the flour is completely moistened. The mixture never really forms a dough, instead retaining its crumbly texture.

Pack. Scrape the mixture into your prepared loaf pan and press it down tightly using your hands. Keep pressing and pushing until it all binds together into a layer about 2 inches thick. Fold the excess parchment over the top and press smooth.

Freeze. Place the pan in the freezer or refrigerator until very stiff, but pliable. If you’re freezing the dough for several days, as we are, take the dough out the evening before you want to bake and let it thaw in the refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking mats.

Slice. Use a sharp knife to slice the loaf into pieces that are about 1/8 inch thick. It’s tricky because of the whole nuts in the mix — we suggest trying both a serrated knife and a chef’s knife to see which is more effective.

Bake. Place the slices on the prepared baking sheets, leaving some space between them, and bake until golden brown, 10-14 minutes, depending on the thickness of your slices. Let cool completely on the pans; they should crisp nicely.

At the time we’re writing this, we haven’t tried the cookies, but we do have to admit we like the simplicity of the dough. Basically, just mix a few things together, shape, chill, slice, and bake. We’ll update this post a bit later to add a few more photos and include our rating based on our proprietary “worth it” scale, so check back. Or, make these yourself, and let us know.

Update: Okay, we thawed the cookie dough as directed, and then tried to slice. Not a pretty sight. The dough split, and crumbs broke loose. We did manage to get some nice-looking cookies with a bit of perseverance, and by slicing the loaf in half lengthwise before cutting off cookie-sized pieces. The cookies are pretty tasty — we like the cherries with the almonds and pistachios — but we can’t really recommend this recipe very strongly. After all, cookies should be super easy to whip up, not frustrating, so these get two stars. Make oatmeal cookies with cherries, almonds, and pistachios, instead.

Worth the trouble?