Almond orange florentines

When Spring rolls around, I crave crunchy, crispy things more than ever. It was serendipitous then that these “florentines” came out so crunchy, as I usually expect florentines to be chewy and sticky with a bit of crispiness as an afterthought. This recipe has been bookmarked in my copy of The Ottolenghi Cookbook for ages, orange and almond being one of my favourite sweet flavour combos. The night I made these, I really needed something protein-laden following a bit of a thrown-together dinner that basically consisted of what was in the fridge, soba noodles and a miso-soy-mirin dressing.

Weirdly, these kind of reminded me of potato chips, but sweet with a more-ish almond orange flavour. Since they are so protein heavy, one fills you up quite nicely, which makes them a pretty tasty breakfast on the go with a cup of coffee or tea (I won’t lie…I have done it!). They’re a good base recipe if you’ve never made florentines before (which are more complicated I reckon), I can imagine these half dipped in dark or white chocolate, or with chopped dried apricots mixed into the “batter.”

Also, they are delicately pretty, and great for eating outside because, well, they crumble a lot (in the best possible way of course). If you want an excuse to eat thin crunchy sweet treats in the sun, these are for you :D

from the Ottolenghi Cookbook

makes about 20x8cm florentines or 12x11cm florentines

• 2 medium/large egg whites
• 100g icing sugar
• 260 sliced almonds
• zest of 1 orange

Preheat oven to 150C (300F), brush a large tray (or two) with oil or use baking paper and still brush with oil.

Mix the icing sugar, egg whites and orange zest until uniform, then fold in the almond to coat with the binding mixture. Plop a large truffle-sized amount of mixture onto your oiled tray, and gently flatten with a fork, making the biscuit as thin as possible without creating too many large gaps. The biscuits should be about 8cm wide to make 20, but I only made 12 and they were quite a bit bigger! Repeat until the tray is full – you don’t need to leave much space between each one as they don’t spread out much at all.

Bake until the biscuits are golden brown – the recipe says 12 minutes, but mine took more like 40 minutes since they were bigger. No matter :) Check under one biscuit to see if they’re golden underneath too. Put more mixture on another tray whilst the first batch are baking.

Cool before trying to remove from the tray. They may stick a little if you don’t use paper, but if you’re using a thin baking tray you can bend it slightly and this will help you get a spatula underneath without breaking them up too much.

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