In the picture on the left, the Mostaccioli is the dark one. This tray has so many other delicious pastries that I cooked with my mother over the past summer. We had a lot of fun cooking together like the old days in Italy. I also have a series ‘Cooking with La Mamma di Mamma di Pino’ which contains recipes for all these delicious treats. Enjoy!

Ingredients

4.5 cups (1kg) Flour

10.5 oz (300grams) Sugar

10.5 oz (300grams) Almond toasted and grinded

10.5 oz (300grams) Chocolate grated

10.5 oz (300grams) Honey

3 or 4 tablespoons non sweeten Coco powder

6 tablespoons Oil

1 Lemon grated

1/2 cup of Strega liquor

2 oz Espresso Coffee

1 tablespoon (20 grams) Cooking Ammonia for baking

2 teaspoon of Cinnamon

Preparation

In a bowl put the flour, almonds, grated dark chocolate, coco powder, grated lemon and cinnamon

Mix all very well

Put the mix on a wood surface

Make a well and in the middle put the eggs and the cooking ammonia.

Beat them well.

 Add sugar, honey, oil, espresso coffee and liquor. With a fork start combining all the ingredients mixing it all with the flour. If you like you can also mix  all the wet ingredients in a bowl and add to the dry ingredients

Now that all is mixed, work the dough on the wood table like if you were making (homemade pasta)

Make a long  row of about 10 inch. Press it  down a little with your hands.  In a 2 inch wide with a knife cut in diagonal 2 inch cookie. Now you have 2 by 2 cookie.

Place all the cookies on a sheet pan at 350 for 10 minutes.

Let them cool down.

When the cookies are cold,  melt the dark chocolate in a pan over boiling water (Bagnomaria) When melting the chocolate, add 1  2 TBL of oil so the chocolate is going to be nice and shining. Brush each cookie with the chocolate until they are coated very well. This may seem complicated, but in practice is not that bad.

Make  a baking date with your friends.  It is going to be a lot of fun. They will love you . These cookies also freeze well.

Buon appetito!