Happy Cinco de Mayo!

We had a potluck at work today to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I offered to make some sort of dessert, then remembered it was supposed to be Mexican-themed, then frantically went searching for some sort of Mexican dessert to make. Flan is the only thing I could think of, but I'm not a big flan fan, so I poked through my trusty friend Google and found this recipe for Mexican almond cookies. The recipe is from some Frida Kahlo cookbook, so I figured it was authentic enough to bring for a work party.

Basically, it's egg, butter, sugar, cornmeal, flour, and mushed up almonds. I like all those things, so I figured I'd try it out.



The cookies flattened out a lot in the oven and looked kind of like corn cakes. They tasted pretty good though. The outer edges were nice and crispy. The recipe has an option of adding meringue topping, though it says nothing about cooking the meringue after you add it. This bothered me a little bit. I actually like my co-workers and would rather not poison them all with salmonella. So I pulled out my kitchen torch!



Okay, I'll be honest with you. As soon as I saw that this recipe had meringue that I could torch at the end, I decided to make it - I didn't just randomly think last night, "Oh hey, maybe I should use my torch." It was all a set up for me to use the torch.

The cookies were pretty good - they tasted kind of like cornmeal shortbread - but once I topped them with the meringue and let them sit overnight, they became a little mushy. Everyone at the potluck liked them, they just had to eat them with a knife and fork.