Can you get drunk on coffee liqueur cookies?

COFFEE ALMOND COOKIES BASED ON STRAZZATE 

Here's a cookie that I find intriguing: strazzate – "traditional crumbly cookies from the Basilicata region of Italy... flavoured with Strega, an Italian herbal liqueur", says Saveur.com.

What I find interesting is that the cookie, made primarily from almond meal, is not bound together by butter or eggs, but by the Strega (or alternatively, Galliano) and coffee, the beverage. 

I didn't have any herbal liqueur, but I did have Kahlùa. So I made some substitutions for a strazzate-like cookie flavoured with coffee liqueur.

I can only imagine what the real thing must taste like, but I don't understand why Saveur calls them, in English, chocolate-almond cookies. These cookies may contain chocolate, but it hardly features. I have a feeling the creators of the cookie were very much focused on the liqueur and its herbal flavour, as well as a taste of coffee rather than chocolate. Mine has the tiny bit of chocolate called for in the original recipe but I've left it out of the name of my cookie.

The Saveur recipe says to bake for 30 minutes, but for my wayward oven, that's too long. But then ovens are not all the same, and we will know how our own works. I give my cookies 20 minutes at the most, and then turn off the oven and let them crisp up inside. They form a crisp shell and have a chewy crumb. I think of the cookie as an almond macaroon (and perhaps even macaron) without the egg white. 

To answer the question posed in the title of this post, no, you can't get drunk on these cookies. Not after they're baked anyway. You can probably tell there's Kahlùa in them, and the cookies go very well with a cup of coffee.

The raw cookie dough, however... now, that is potent!

Crisp shell and chewy on the inside

Coffee Almond Cookies
Makes 18. Based on the strazzate recipe from Saveur.com

120g almond meal

10g (about 1 tbsp) chopped almonds

110g all-purpose flour

110g caster sugar

20g (about 1 tbsp) mini chocolate chips

3g (about ½ tbsp) cocoa powder

Pinch of fine salt

½ tbsp neutral-flavoured oil

¼ tsp baking powder

½ tbsp lukewarm water

60ml water

40ml coffee liqueur (or use espresso)

Grease a large baking sheet. Preheat oven to 170ºC.

Combine the almond meal, chopped almonds, flour, sugar, chocolate chips, cocoa, salt and oil in a mixing bowl. 

Stir the baking powder into the lukewarm water. It will bubble almost immediately. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients together with the 60ml water and liqueur, and stir everything together quickly into a wet dough.

With a one-tablespoon-capacity ice-cream scoop, place mounds of dough 5cm apart on the prepared sheet (or form into balls with hands). They pretty much keep their shape so for flatter cookies, press the tops lightly to level them. Bake until set and light brown, about 20 minutes. Turn off the oven, prop the door open slightly and leave the cookies inside to crisp up, another 10 to 15 minutes.