These Vegan Amaretti - Italian almond cookies - are crunchy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside, and bursting with almond flavor. They are perfect as a sweet during holidays and Christmas for parties and special occasions.
We take the original Italian amaretti recipe and make it without eggs for a flavor and texture that is as delicious as the non-vegan one.
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Ingredients
- Aquafaba: as a replacement for egg white we use chickpea water, also called aquafaba. Aquafaba has amazing foaming properties that make it the perfect egg white replacement for meringues and for various desserts where the beaten eggs' airy texture is a crucial ingredient.
Think of a moist, light chocolate brownie cake, ladyfingers for tiramisù, or almond orange cookies. - Almond flour: we used store-bought almond flour.
- Sugar: White granulated sugar or caster sugar is the best to make perfectly light and crisp amaretti cookies.
- Amaretto liquor: or almond aroma
- Powdered sugar: for the cookie batter and for sprinkling on top
- Vanilla aroma: or vanilla powder for sweetness
Storage
Our vegan amaretti keep fresh for up to a week if stored well in an airtight container, in a dry corner of your kitchen. You could stretch the storage time to up to two weeks, but the cookies will get a lot drier. In this case, you could warm them up slightly in the oven before serving them.
Tips
Amaretti are consumed mostly during winter and the Christmas period in Italy, generally eaten at the end of a meal, or as a snack in the middle of the afternoon. If you eat them after a meal, they are best served with a glass of sweet wine or warm plant milk on the side.
As the Italian tradition says, the cookies and biscuits are typically served on an abundant tray of cookies and accompanied by other types of Italian sweets. In many homes, they are also eaten for breakfast, mid-morning, and afternoon snacks - basically at any time!
Amaretti cookies are often served for parties, Christmas, and special occasions. For example, try making our other delicious cookies, such as Orange Almond Cookies, Almond Biscotti, and Red Wine Cookies. They are all perfect for winter, the holiday season, or at any other time when you feel like a sweet treat with no eggs and no butter.
Recipe
Vegan Amaretti - Italian Almond Cookies
Ingredients
Dry ingredients
- 115 g almond flour store bought
- 70 g sugar
- 50 g powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
Wet ingredients
- 25 g acquafaba this is simply the chickpea water from a can of chickpeas
- 7 g amaretto liqueur or almond aroma
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
You'll also need
- 3 tablespoon powdered sugar for coating the amaretti
Instructions
- In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients together.
- In a clean bowl, add the aquafaba - the water in a can of chickpeas - making sure there are no chickpea pieces in the water.
- With an electric whisk/hand mixer beat up the chickpea water just like if it were egg whites. It should turn into an extra firm foam.
- Scoop the foam into the bowl with the dry mix, then with a spatula, incorporate it to the dry ingredients, mixing gently with a circular movement from bottom to top.
- Add the amaretto liqueur and the vanilla flavour to the mix and keep incorporating gently until you get a paste/dough.
- Now, prepare a plate with 3 tablespoon of powdered sugar. Take small pieces of dough and with your hands, start making small balls out of it. Each ball should weigh about 20 g to 23 g. This is important or else they won't cook properly.Shape the balls, then roll them on the plate with the powder sugar until they are fully coated.
- Shake away the excess powdered sugar, then place them on a plate and let them rest in the freezer for 45 minutes. You can try to bake them straight away if you don't have time, but their shape might not hold when heated up in the oven. Preheat the oven to 170C/340F.
- Place them on a tray lined with baking paper or a silicon baking mat, and bake at 170C / 340F for about 15 minutes. The cooking time depends a lot on the oven, so keep an eye on them. They are ready when they start cracking on top. Let cool down for about 15 minutes before serving.
Nicole Trager
These turned out great for me. I doubled the recipe, used my kitchen scale, and was extra careful in the folding step not to flatten the air. They came out beautifully.
Nico
Hi Nicole, thanks so much for your message. I am so happy they turned out great! This is probably the most difficult recipe on our blog, so really well done 🙂
Mariah
I made these exactly how the recipe described. They turned out perfectly!
Nico
Hi Mariah, thanks so much for your message. We are so happy they turned out perfectly! Thanks for letting us know 🙂
Ambra
I've just tried this recipe and the result was a complete mess. I beated the acquafaba untill it formed stiff peaks (when I put the bowl upside down nothing fell from it). Each biscuits I made weighed 20g and I let them rest for almost an hour in the freezer. After 10 minutes since I popped them in the oven they collapsed and melted down all together. I don't understand what went wrong. That was a real disappointment, waste of time, food and money.
Nico
Hi Ambra, I am sorry the almond cookies didn't turn out well. I am sure you didn't do anything wrong, it is a tricky recipe, with a lot of variables. It could be the type of almond flour (it needs to be very fine), or the dusting with the powdered sugar, or the temperature and type of the oven (it should be static, not ventilated). But thanks for the feedback, I'll try to add more tips in the blog post. Ps. if you haven't thrown them out already, the collapsed cookies taste great crumbled on top of vegan vanilla icecream.
joe
Why throw them out??? I never never throw anything out notwithstandin how ugly etc they are. Even if burnt I scrape off the burnt part and consume.