At almost any Italian bakery, alongside the biscotti, cannoli, and (at Christmastime) panettone, you’ll find delicate pine nut cookies (a.k.a. pignoli). Crisp outside and chewy within, pignoli cookies get their texture from almond paste and egg whites. For this particular recipe, it’s important to use canned almond paste—the type sold in tubes is too crumbly and won’t give the cookies the right consistency. You could also make almond paste from scratch—avoid marzipan, which contains fewer almonds and more sugar.
Because they don’t contain any flour or butter, Italian pignoli cookies are a gluten-free and dairy-free treat, making them an ideal holiday cookie for anyone worried about those particular allergies.
This classic pignoli cookie recipe calls for transferring the cookie dough from the bowl of a food processor to a stand mixer. You can cut down on prep time (and cleanup time), though, by making the dough, in its entirety, in just one or the other. For evenly sized cookies, use a pastry bag (or cookie scoop) to pipe 1½" dough balls onto a cookie sheet and place pine nuts all over each mound. Leave at least 1" between mounds so that the heat of the oven can turn the surface of each cookie golden brown and crispy.
Want to boost the almond flavor even further? Add up to ¼ tsp. almond extract along with the egg whites.
Editor’s note: This recipe was originally printed in the December 2002 issue of ‘Gourmet’ and first appeared online August 20, 2004.
Recipe notes
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