SC - Roman Desserts

[Woeller D]

At 12:11 PM 17/02/98 -0800, david friedman wrote:

>Wouldn't the Fettiplace recipe give a much solider result, since there is
>no "beat egg whites to stiff and fold in" step--the egg whites are beaten,
>then everything is beaten together? I haven't done this, but Prince's
>biscuit, somewhat similar but with flour and roughly contemporary, is much
>harder than I would expect the almond cookies to be.
>
>When you did it, how hard did the biskit bread turn out?

Surprisingly they weren't like Prince Biskit at all.  There is no flour in
this recipe, only ground almonds.  And there is only egg white not egg yolk.
I have attempted this recipe many times, first by fluffing the egg white and
then adding the dry ingredients, mixing the dry ingredients first and then
adding unbeaten egg white, and by beating the eggs till they meringue and
then dding the other ingredients.  I have also used store-bought round
almonds and at other times ground them myself.  None of these seem to make
any difference to the end result.

The end result is a dense chewy biskit with a thin crisp shell. They are
very filling (especially when made "the bigness of my hand") but they are
not heavy.  I think it is because of the soft chewy middle, these are
considered lighter and preferable to a harder biskit - such as Pince Biskit.

Also I forgot to mention that they must be made thick, at least 1/2 inch
thick, so there is no point rolling them out with a rolling pin.  The extra
air left in the mixture would also help keep the biskit light.

Hope this helps

Meliora.

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