Buttery French TV Snacks NYTimes Cooking Julia Moskin Yield:about 2 dozen cookies ¾ cup blanched almonds or hazelnuts, lightly toasted and cooled to room temporature ½ cup sugar ½ tsp. kosher or flaky sea salt (if using fine or table salt, use 3/8 tsp.) 1 cup all-purpose flour 7 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces Position 2 oven racks in top third and bottome third of oven. Preheat the oven to 325o. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a food processor, grind nuts, sugar and salt to a fine meal. In a mixer, beat flour and butter together on low speed until texture is sandy. Add nut mixture and mix on low until dough starts to form small lumps; keep mixing until dough just holds together when pinched between fingers. Do not use wet fingers: the cookies will collapse. Pinch off about a teaspoon of dough and place in palm of your hand. With tips of fingers, pinch and press dough together until cookie has a flat bottom and pointed top, like a rough pyramid. Cookies need not be perfectly smooth or equal size. Place on parchment about 1 inch apart. Bake about 15 minutes, rotating cookie sheets halfway through. Cookies should be turning golden brown on edges. Cool on sheets 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks and cool completely before storing in airtight containers up to 1 week. Note: According to Julia Moskin good butter is the key to these cookies which have neither levening to lift nor eggs to hold them together. The pastry chef Anita Chu, a Berkeley-trained structural engineer with a baking habit she couldn't shake, adapted these cookies known as croq-télé from the Paris pastry chef Arnaud Larher.

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