Passover Mandelbread or Drop Cookies With Chocolate Chips

Although Passover is over, I still want to share some of the recipes that I made over the holiday. This way, I can keep track for next year.

This year, for the very first time, I experimented with making kosher for Passover mandelbread with chocolate chips. I also used the dough to make drop cookies as well. 

Mandelbread is a very traditional Jewish cookie similar to biscotti that I make during the year.

As I have shared, one of the culinary challenges of Passover is baking desserts without sacrificing taste and texture.

I usually try to stick to recipes that are specifically designed to be kosher for Passover. Especially when baking, I find that it is difficult to adapt recipes to be suitable for the holiday.

For many reasons, I also avoid cooking and baking with matzah meal. I find that matzah meal makes the texture dry and tastes unpleasant. 

So, I wanted to make mandelbread which is non-gebrokts (without matzah meal) and also gluten free. However, I couldn’t find a recipe to accommodate my specifications.

So, I broke some of my personal baking rules. I took my regular mandelbread recipe and adapted it for Passover. 

Instead of regular flour, I used almond flour and tapioca starch. I was not planning on initially adding the tapioca starch. But, the dough was too sticky and did not hold its shape without it.

Below is the recipe of how I made the cookies this year, together with my recommendations for how to improve the recipe for next year.

Ingredients 

1 orange

2 eggs

3/4 cups sugar

Recommendation: Can also make with only 1/2 cup sugar. 

1/2 cup oil

Next time, I might use 1/4 cup of oil as nuts have a higher fat content.

4 cups almond flour 

1/2 – 1 cup  tapioca starch (approximately to make the dough less sticky and able to be shaped)

With less oil, tapioca starch may not be necessary.

2 teaspoons baking power

1 cup chopped nuts (approximately, to make the dough less sticky and able to be shaped)

9 oz. chocolate chips

Instructions 

Using a food processor, pulse the whole orange until finely chopped. 

Add the sugar, eggs and oil and mix until smooth. 

Then add almond flour and baking powder and pulse until blended.

I found that the dough was too sticky, so I added the tapioca starch and chopped almonds.

Stir in 9 oz. of chocolate chips.

Bake in 350*F oven until lightly browned and firm to touch. 

Raizel loves “dot” cookies, which I rarely make. 

So, most of the batter was made as drop cookies. 

A much smaller amount was baked in a log like mandelbread. 

When cooked, I sliced the dough and baked them again in a 250*F oven until toasted.

Here are the pictures:

The cookie dough when fully mixed

Dough shaped as drop cookies

Drop cookies final product

The final product baked like mandelbread/biscotti

It actually turned out to be less time consuming to make drop cookies instead of mandelbread. And, I think the texture was better too.

It may be that with almond flour, the dough is less resilient? I also think that the texture might be better if the dough is chilled prior to baking.

Overall, the cookies were a hit. Raizel declared, “this is killer!” 

And, they are even being eaten after Passover!

Enjoy!