Langue de chat (cat's tongue) - Sounds fancy, looks fancy, super easy!

 


Langue de chat ("cat's tongue") looks like something out of a fancy European bakery. These thin butter cookies have the rich flavor of a good shortbread, with a much lighter, more delicate texture, almost like the ice cream cones at a really good gelato place, that they definitely charge you extra for.  

Truth is they're neither expensive nor difficult to make. In fact they're the perfect way to use up extra egg whites from other recipes, that you don't know what to with. Everyday recipes like cookies, custard, chocolate pudding, etc, often call for extra egg yolk for richness. If you're ever left with 1~3 extra egg white(s) that you feel bad wasting but just don't want to deal with, because scrambled feels too healthy and meringue feels too unhealthy, this is your perfect in-between. I'm sharing a small portion recipe that uses only 1 egg white, along with ~2tbsp of butter, flour, ground almond, and sugar. Feel free to scale up, but even this small batch will comfortably make one and half dozen cookies.

The rule of thumb for langue de chat is equal weight egg whites, butter, sugar, and flour. If you have almond flour (ground almonds), swapping out half the flour for almond meal will yield better flavor and browning. You can further flavor the cookies easily by swapping out part of the flour for cocoa powder or matcha. 

I'm deviating from tradition a tiny bit by using melted butter instead of creamed. Because this is meant to be a thin cookie that doesn't really rise, you don't need to aerate the egg whites or the butter. The biggest difference between melted butter vs creamed butter in cookies is that melted butter will result in thinner batter, and the cookies will spread more. That is not a bad thing here. thinner batter is easier to pipe, and spreading yields great browning.

Ingredients (makes about 16-20 pieces):  

  • 1 egg white (~30g)   
  • 30g sugar (2 tbsp)
  • 30g butter, melted (2tbsp)
  • 15g flour  (2 tbsp)
  • 15g ground almond (2tbsp)
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla paste or extract 

Instruction: 

Mix together butter, sugar, egg white, vanilla until thoroughly combined. Add ground almond and flour; mix until just combined.  Pipe the batter out to any shape you like. Bake at 375F for 9~10 minutes, until edges are browned. 

Optional shaping: The cookies can be bend while hot. You can press them on a rolling pin and let them cool; they will harden as they cool. 

Check out my YouTube Channel for step-by-step videos!






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