Crispy Coffee Almond Cookie

I had been churning out several "prototypes" of the Le Cafe wannabe in my little kitchen since November... some are outright horrendous that the entire batch went into the chute, and some are good but lack oomph.

After all my month's of R&D, I am happy when someone complimented the latest creation of the version 3.2:

I met up with my pals on the christmas eve (now you know how far back am I in this post), I also brought along some cookies from previous batch for tasting and comparison... Quite glad that the testers agreed unanimously that the latest batch is the best!

For cocoa powder, it is obvious that the valrhona is far superior than the others; when I compare cookie baked with other dutch-processed cocoa powder (side by side), this one has a deep dark hue and deep chocolate aroma!

This prompts me to go get the Cacao Barry, a premuim belgian cocoa powder. I have never used this before. I have been hear from many bakers raved of it's quality... I would save my comment till I've tried-and-tasted!

I packed this into small packs for my appreciative friend.

In return I got a big big present:

If you are reading this, pal, pls do not bother with the formalities next time... otherwise I very "pai-say" to send you my cookies.