Recipe from my fellow teacher, Ms. Marden
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup butter
- 1 ¼ cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- ½ tsp. vanilla
- 1 ½ tsp. almond extract
- ½ tsp. salt
- 1 ½ cups flour (can use almond flour, if available)
- slivered almonds
- powdered sugar (optional)
Directions:
- Melt but don’t boil the butter. (I used the baking pan I was going to use, and put it alongside the granola we were baking at 250 deg F.)
- In a large bowl, add together the sugar, eggs, vanilla, almond extract, tsp salt (especially if your butter is unsalted), 1 1/2 cups flour (I sometimes use 1 cup white and 1/2 cup almond flour but you don’t need to). Mix well with a rubber spatula.
- Transfer the melted butter to the rest of the ingredients in the bowl.
- Grease a cake pan and line with parchment paper, which you should also grease (I used butter).
- With a rubber spatula, scrape the mix into the cake pan, smooth it out a bit, and spread either sliced or slivered almonds on the top. (I chopped my own raw almonds.)
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes. Dust with confectioners sugar to finish.
My colleague, Julie Marden, is a 12th grade ELA teacher who would regularly bake to celebrate little achievements at our high school. We co-taught AP Language together, and co-led the Yearbook Club for the Class of 2022, so she would make this after the AP Exam or for the yearbook deadline to celebrate. I adore almond desserts, like German marzipan or Italian-American rainbow cookies or chocolate-dipped almond horns, so this dish was a big win for me, and so easy to make (once you find the almond extract)! If you have almond flour, you can make this entirely gluten-free.
~Jessica