Basler herzen

After making the spiced chocolate and almond cookies last year, I decided to make the original version- those heart-shaped cookies, called basler herzen. 

Ingredients (makes about 40 cookies, depending on how big your cookies cutter is):

For the cookies:

• 100g dark chocolate (gluten-free for gluten free recipe)
• 250g ground almonds
• 230g icing sugar
• 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 2 egg whites
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp Amaretto 
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or extract

Additionally:

• 1 egg white
• few tablespoons of caster sugar

Melt the chocolate over a bain marie and set aside.  In a large bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff (like for a meringue), then add all dry ingredients and mix until well combined.  Add melted chocolate, vanilla and amaretto and stir.

Wrap the dough in foil and leave to chill in the fridge for about 1 hour.  Roll out the dough to 1 cm thick, you can dust the surface with icing sugar to stop the dough from sticking, cut out snow flakes. 

Place on a lined baking sheet and leave to dry out for 10-12 hours.  Brush cookies with an egg white  (save the remaining egg white for the icing) and bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for about 10 minutes, the cookies will be still soft, especially in the middle, and will just start to crackle and brown on top.  Take out the oven and leave to cool a little, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Brush the egg white around the edges of each cookie, then sprinkle with caster sugar.

Enjoy!