Kourabiedes (p. 451)

Kourabiedes are Greek Butter-Almond Cookies and they're the perfect treat for a warm summer night in North Carolina sitting around a campfire with your buds. Which is exactly how I ate them last night.

I first roasted sliced almonds by spreading them in a cookie pan and heating them for about 15 minutes in the oven until they were golden brown. Half of them I tossed in the food processor with granulated sugar until they were finely chopped. The other half I hand-chopped so that they had a little more texture but were still fairly small.

The cookie dough is pretty similar to more traditional cookies -- butter, egg, vanilla, flour, baking powder, salt, and confectioners sugar. And cognac, which led to a long conversation with my dad about whether brandy from Cognac, France is actually cognac or not. Anyway, it was the only brandy I had, so I used it.

Both sets of chopped almonds were mixed in with the dough until it was uniformly mixed. Then its off to the oven, where they took about 15 minutes to cook. I scattered more confectioner's sugar over the tops of the cookies while they were cooling on racks, and then packed them up to take to last night's party.

Yum! These were delicious. They're super crumbly (probably from the amount of butter in them) and the almond flavor isn't overpowering. I loved these.

butter -- $1.75

egg -- $1.02 (I only used one of the 6)

almonds -- $4.90

Total Cost of Kourabiedes: $7.67