I was asked by a lovely friend to add a Florentine Cookie recipe to my blog...so here it is.

Florentine cookies are a crisp, thin Italian cookie made normally with fruit and nuts.  This "cookie" is different because it starts out more like a batter than a traditional cookie dough.  The Florentine is like no other, it is lacy and thin, crunchy, buttery and if you drizzle chocolate on them, they will be irresistible to mammals. You can let them cool flat or roll them up like cannoli's (this is done while they are hot) even use them as cannoli's or sandwich flat cookies together with a dollop of melted chocolate.  There will be broken cookies...yes you will be astonished at how many you will inevitably destroy-even when you are being careful...(the good news is that one batch makes plenty of cookies.)  But, hey that's ok, you can use the delicious "crumbs" on top of ice cream, pudding, yogurt, cottage cheese, in or on cakes and cupcakes or you can use them to add crunch to your french toast...the crumbs are too good to throw out.

Ok. Lets get started.  Hopefully you have a small (size 100) ice cream/server scoop, or one smaller than a (huge) standard ice cream scoop, if not just use a 1/2 tablespoon per scoop of batter.

You will need:
1 3/4 cup nuts, any kind
3/4 cup dried fruit, any kind
1 orange (for 2 Tablespoons of zest)
3 Tablespoons of all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon of fine salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons heavy cream
1 Tablespoon corn syrup
5 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Chocolate Topping Optional
4-5 ounces of semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips melted for 30 seconds at a time until just melted.

Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 350'.  Line a baking sheet with a Silpat mat or parchment paper.

Pulse nuts and dried fruit in food processor until finely chopped but not pasty.  Stir together the nut/fruit mixture with the flour, zest and salt in a large bowl.
In a small saucepan, put the cream, sugar, corn syrup and butter together and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until this comes to a rolling boil.  Continue to boil for one more minute, remove from heat and add vanilla, stir.
Stir the hot sugar and butter mixture over the nuts/fruit/flour mixture and stir to combine. Set this aside to cool for about 30 minutes.
Scoop small rounds of batter onto your prepared pan, keeping 3-4 inches between each cookie as they spread while baking.
Bake one pan at a time for 10-11 minutes.  Rotate pan halfway through baking.
To make rolled up cookies, wait to quickly hand roll each one 1-2 minutes after cookies are out of the oven.  Be warned, if you want to make rolled cookies you have to work quickly to get all of the cookies done before they cool too much and because they are very hot and it can hurt.
Otherwise, let cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, remove to wire cooling rack.  Drizzle with chocolate if desired.  You can also dip one or both ends of rolled cookies in melted chocolate.  Let chocolate cool and set up.

To store these cookies is another thing.  If left out they will get sticky and lose their crispy-ness.  I suggest storing them in airtight containers with parchment paper between each cookie.