cherry almond cookies DSC6102

Ratios and cherry almond cookies

I’m an improvisational cook. This means that I’ll take stock of what I have in the kitchen and then create dishes from what’s available. This method usually works if I’m making savory dishes, but when it comes to baking I’ve had less success. (We won’t discuss the time I spontaneously threw in steel oats, cayenne, and sea salt into a chocolate cookie recipe.)

Baking calls for precision, which I lack. For a long time I’ve wondered if there were basic formulas for making pastries, something I could use to make up my own recipes, if say, I wanted a steel oat and sea salt cookie to actually be edible. So when I heard about Michael Ruhlman’s latest book, Ratio, I knew this was the information I’d been looking for.

cherry almond cookies | Homesick Texan

A professor of Ruhlman’s at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) presented him with the initial ratio concept, which takes certain foods and reduces them to their basic essence. For instance, let’s look at pie crust. Its ratio is 3 parts flour: 2 parts fat: 1 part water. So no matter if you’re mixing butter and lard with wheat flour and ground pecans, or shortening with oat flour and buckwheat, by using these exact proportions of fat to flour to water you should have a crust that works.

Besides his pastry section—which covers all doughs and batters—he also shares the ratios for stocks, farcir (a fancy term for sausages), sauces and custards. And while he provides measurement conversion from weight to volume—ounces to cups—you’ll learn that it’s more accurate to use a scale.

cherry almond cookies | Homesick Texan
Now that I had Ruhlman’s ratios on hand, I decided to put them to work. I wanted to make a shortbread cookie in which the ratio is 1 part sugar: 2 parts fat: 3 parts flour.

I placed a four-ounce stick of butter in a bowl on top of my new toy—my kitchen scale—and then creamed it with two ounces of powdered sugar. I had some almond flour around, so I threw in three ounces of that and then three ounces of wheat flour. To jazz up the cookie a bit more, I added a pinch of salt, a pinch of nutmeg and an ounce of chopped dried cherries.

I know that I’m prone to exaggeration, but believe me when I say that this dough was a dream to work with as it wasn’t too sticky nor was it too dry. It was just right. And the cookies baked beautifully. Still unsure about this wonderful cookie I’d made without a recipe, I took them to a group of people with very discerning palates—my coworkers. I explained to them how I’d baked with ratios and not a recipe and I needed their honest opinion on the cookies. They ignored me, however, and managed to finish the whole batch in record time. I reckon this means that my ratio cookies were indeed delicious.

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5 from 1 vote

Cherry almond cookies

Servings 20 cookies
Author Lisa Fain

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces powdered sugar plus more for coating cookies (1/4 cup)
  • 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature (1/2 cup)
  • 3 ounces almond flour (1/2 cup)
  • 3 ounces all-purpose wheat flour (1/2 cup)
  • Pinch of salt
  • Pinch of nutmeg
  • 2 ounces dried cherries, chopped (1/4 cup)

Instructions

  • Cream the butter and the sugar and then mix in the flour, salt, nutmeg, and dried cherries.
  • Form the dough into a log, and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.
  • Preheat the oven to 350° F.
  • On a greased cookie sheet or one lined with parchment paper or a Silpat, form the dough into 1/2 tablespoon-sized ball, placing each ball about an inch from the other. Bake for 15 minutes.
  • Let cool for 5 minutes, and then dip cookies into powdered sugar.

Notes

You can make almond flour by grinding nuts until fine in the blender. You can really taste the butter in this cookie, so be sure and use fresh, good quality butter. Also, you can substitute dried blueberries or chocolate chips for the dried cherries.

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48 Comments

  1. Lisa Fain says:

    Catherine–I reckon you could, though I've never tried it.

  2. Rosemary S. says:

    Love this cookie – made a double batch!

    1. Lisa Fain says:

      Rosemary–I’m delighted you love them!