The only thing my mother ever asked me to bring home from the bakery where I worked in high school where almond horn cookies, or Mandelhörnchen, probably no surprise as we are a family of established marzipan fiends, most especially when dark chocolate is also involved. Chewy at the center with crunchy edges, the best ones are dipped in chocolate and while I have yet to see them also with rainbow sprinkles, I say there’s no time like the present to make this a Thing.

If you have no soft spot for almond paste or almond extract, you should turn away now. It’s almost all they’re made of. They’re also naturally flourless, gluten-, leavener- and dairy-free (if you use a dairy-free chocolate); the last time we had a cookie that checked all of these boxes it was all I could talk about for the next six months.

Had I realized how simple they were to make and that they would come out looking exactly as pretty as they do at bakeries, I would have made them at a couple years, cough, decades sooner. Unless you live in Germany and every corner bakery makes them (this is how I picture Germany, by the way, each corner with a hundreds year-old shop brimming with streuselkuchens and strudels and poppy seed everything, please don’t break my heart with the truth if I’m wrong, okay?), you should make these at home, and soon.

***

So, of course I could never leave things well enough alone because I know not everyone can get good almond paste at the corner bodega, I attempted to make them with homemade almond paste. Alas, while my first attempt tasted exactly right, the cookies I made with it flattened out. I have a lot more experimenting to do; until then, storebought almond paste is as reliable as it gets.