Almond Horns, take 1

Last week, a friend of mine introduced me to these sinfully delicious treats, and I can only guess that the chef who came up with them has sold his or her soul to You-Know-Who (no, not Voldemort, but I couldn't resist throwing a H.P. reference in here). This is why I figure they're called horns, because they look more like a boomerang to me. They were kinda crunchy on the outside and filled with chewy almondy goodness on the inside. And they were huge - big enough for two, but if I was all by my lonesome I could've eaten at least two or three of these bad boys without batting an eyelash. It's a veeeerrrrryyyyy good thing the bakery she got them from is pretty inconvenient to get to. (The picture above is just one I found on the internet, but it looks pretty much like the one I had.)

At any rate, I've got a thing for almond flavored baked goods and knew I must find a way to make them. A quick Google search (what would we do without that little internet tool?) came up with about 300,000 hits. I looked through quite a few before settling on trying this recipe first from Recipezarr.com. The recipe says to bake for 12-14 minutes, but I'm here to tell you that mine were in for 16 minutes and still came out on the undercooked side. I was just so scared of over-cooking them that I just went ahead and took them out; they are nice and chewy but, unfortunately, no crunchy outside.

My preliminary taste test results - pretty good, but not even close to the ones I tried a week ago. So, darn, I'm going to have to try another recipe. The downside of trying again is that the almond paste is pretty pricey. The upside, of course, is that I get to keep sampling my efforts (I fear the scale is not going to like me after all this).

Wish me luck as I continue on my quest.