Soft and Crumbly Chocolate Chip Almond Cookies - delicious chocolate chip cookies with ground toasted almonds. Crumbly, non-chewy, sand-like, somewhat shortbread-like (but not completely) texture.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Spread almonds on a cookie sheet and toast for about 10-15 minutes to desired toastedness. Let them cool completely.
In a food processor, grind toasted almonds until very finely ground, almost powder-like or very fine coarse-meal. Do not over-process, or you will end up with almond butter. Set aside.
In a large bowl, using mixer, blend butter with brown sugar until creamy. (Note: The butter should not be melted: I usually take a stick of butter out of refrigerator and keep it at room temperature for about an hour). Because your butter is somewhat soft but not too soft, you might have some chunks of butter flying away while using the mixer, but eventually everything will be creamy.
Add vanilla and an egg and continue beating until creamy again. Add finely ground almonds and mix to incorporate. Add baking powder, flour, and ⅛ teaspoon salt and beat on low speed for a minute, then on average speed for a couple of minutes until all dry ingredients are incorporated.
Using spatula, fold chocolate chips into cookie batter.
Place spoonfuls of cookie dough onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 F. Mid-time through baking, I like to pull the cookie sheet out and flatten the cookies with the butter knife: because the dough is made with colder butter, they don’t spread out as much, and flattening them out just a bit helps their appearance. Don’t flatten them out too much, though. Remove from oven and let cookies cool. The best texture that I like is achieved when cookies are bright brown on the bottom and not browned on top (baking 15 minutes exactly at 350 F). If cookies are undercooked and the color on the bottom is too light brown, they will be too soft.