Cantucci, one of the most typical Tuscan sweets. Here I have made them with almonds, but it accepts any kind of nut or even pieces of chocolate. If you have a little bit more than half an hour available, it’s worth preparing them, because the recipe is very easy and you get Cantucci for the children to eat, and you to enjoy them in a relaxing moment, with a glass of sweet wine, for a few days!
In Catalonia there is also a similar, if not identical, sweet: Carquinyolis. I don’t know if there is any connection between them, if there are more versions of the same sweet in more places, but if anyone knows, I would love you to unveil the mystery.
The recipe that inspired me, the one for Cucchiaio d’Argento, also contains honey, and does not use brown sugar. I didn’t have any honey, and I’m addicted to making any kind of sweet with brown sugar, because I’m crazy about the smell and the taste that it gives to everything, and they’re so good.
Buon appetito!
The card
Almond biscuits (cantucci toscani)
Ingredients
- 300 g Flour
- 2 eggs
- 70 g Sugar
- 100 g brown sugar
- 1 Orange
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 40 g Butter
- 90 g Raw almonds
- 1 egg yolk
Instructions
- Grate the skin of the orange
- Beat 2 eggs with the sugar
- Add the flour and baking soda and mix
- Add the butter, orange peel and almonds and mix
- If the mixture is too doughy and difficult to work with, spread oil on your hands to form two rollers of the same size
- Put the rollers on a sheet of baking paper, on a tray and paint the top of both with egg yolk
- In a preheated oven at 190 degrees, bake for 20 minutes
- Cut the bars into 1 cm slices
- Put the cantucci on a tray and brown them at 200 degrees for 2 minutes or until they look toasty