Tuiles - CI

By norsegal8

Fancy caramely cookies that are easy to make as drop cookies. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, they are pressed against s rolling pin so that they cool in a graceful curve, earning them their name, tuile, French for "tile" and a reference to the arched tile roofs of French country homes and chateaux. After the batter is mixed, it needs a long chilling in the refrigerator, so plan ahead.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup coarsely ground blanched almonds
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• grated zest of 1 orange
• 2 ounces (approximately) semisweet chocolate, melted, for decoration

Preparation

Step 1

Put the heavy cream and butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until the butter melts. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla.
Put the almonds, sugar, flour and zest in a medium bowl and stir with a rubber spatula. Add the warm cream mixture and stir with the spatula just until the batter is smooth.

CHILLING THE BATTER
Cover the batter with plastic wrap and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled and thickened, preferably overnight. The batter can be made ahead, wrapped airtight and kept refrigerated for up to 4 days.

BAKING THE COOKIES
When you are ready to bake, position a rack in the center or lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Set aside two nonstick baking sheets and a rolling pin, wine bottle or other cylinder on which you can shape the cookies.
Stir the chilled batter briefly, just in case it has separated. Drop the batter onto the baking sheets, allowing 1 teaspoon of batter for each tuile and leaving about 2 inches between each one. There’s no need to even out the batter – it is a self-spreader.
Bake the cookies for 5 to 8 minutes, just until they spread and turn a honey brown. Don’t leave the kitchen – these go from almost done to overdone in a blink. Transfer the pans to cooling racks and let the cookies set for about 30 seconds.

SHAPING THE COOKIES
If you have baker’s fingers (aka asbestos fingers), slide the cookies back and forth a bit on the baking sheet to release them, then pick them up, one by one, and lay them on the rolling pin. Alternatively, lift the cookies with a metal spatula and lift them onto the rolling pin. Either way, use your fingers to press the cookies lightly against the rolling pin to get a nice curve. The cookies will mold and cool in a few seconds, so remove the shaped cookies as you need more room on the rolling pin. If the cookies cool, and are hard to release from the baking sheets, just put the sheet back in the oven for a minute, then continue.
Repeat with the rest of the batter, making sure the baking sheets cool between batches.

DECORATING THE COOKIES
To decorate the cookies, scrape the melted chocolate into a pastry bag. Snip a tiny hole into the bag and pipe very thin lines across the tuiles. If you are not up to piping, you can get a very attractive finish just by dipping the tines of a fork into the chocolate and waving it back and forth across the cookies; you’re not aiming for symmetry here. Serve as soon as the chocolate sets.

STORING
As delicate as these cookies are, you can store them if you take care. Stack the tuiles between sheets of parchment or waxed paper in a tightly sealed container.