There’s a Place for Shortening (in These Cookies)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate shortening. It’s not the most glamorous of fats, but it does good work. You’ve probably heard shortening can be used to make more delicate pie crusts and tender biscuits, but there’s a place for it in cookie dough, too. Light and tender, primed to crumble but not too fragile, our Chinese Almond Cookies are an excellent dunking cookie for coffee (tea, milk or even Diet Coke) thanks to a bit of shortening.

You might look at this recipe and consider replacing the shortening with more butter. Don’t do it. Unlike butter, shortening doesn’t contain any water or milk solids, and it has a higher melting point. The “pure” fat content keeps gluten strands short in this recipe (no tough cookies here), and the high melting point helps the dough keep its shape in the oven. Shortening doesn’t offer much in the way of flavor however, so we use a 50-50 mixture of butter and shortening to get the best both fats have to offer. The cookies will still spread out a bit, but they won’t flatten, and you’ll beautiful cracks and fissures will form across the surface. Without shortening, you don’t get any of that.

The already tender texture of this cookie gets additional help from a measure of almond flour, and our recipe goes a step further to amplify the nutty flavor. Before the oven is preheated, and before sugar hits butter, we toast the almond flour in a pan. It’s a simple move that adds warmth and complexity by blooming the aromatic oils before the nut flour is incorporated into the dough. While other almond cookies rely heavily on almond extract, ours uses just a dab to complement the existing flavors.

I made this recipe to get into the spirit of celebrating Lunar New Year next week. These almond cookies get an egg yolk finish so they bake up resembling shiny gold coins. It’s a symbol of prosperity and wealth—so wish me luck. If you’re in the mood for more nutty bakes, try our Double Sesame and Almond Cookies or, one of my favorite cakes, our Almond-Coconut Cake with Cherries and Pistachios.

Baking Tip of the Week: Working with scales and brushes

I’m not exactly a perfectionist—I have a surprisingly devil-may-care attitude for a baker—but some recipes have “a look” and that requires precision. If I’m making two trays of Chinese Almond Cookies, which are well-known for being perfectly round and golden with a single almond in the center, I need them to look uniform.

The dough is easy to make, it’s the shaping and finishing that can get messy. To keep the process orderly and replicable, break out your kitchen scale. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, shame on you, but you can grab a small spring-loaded disher and portion the dough. Just be sure you pack it the same way every time. If you eye-ball it, you’ll almost certainly wind up with different sizes. A regular spoon is better than nothing, but grams are best. Each portion of dough weighed between 24 and 25 grams.

The cookies get an egg yolk wash before baking, and while our recipe indicates that you can dip the cookies in the egg wash, the perfectionist in me recommends a pastry brush. Dipping is messy and unpredictable; you can’t really control the amount that ends up on each cookie. Brushing is faster, and you can dictate how much wash each cookie gets and ensure coverage. As far as the almond goes, do your best to aim for the center and you’ll have cookies fit for a bakery shelf.

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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.