Today’s recipe comes from the Sept. 15, 2009, issue of Woman’s Day Magazine.

Almond Triangles

— 2/3 cup sugar

— 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

— 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

— 1/4 teaspoon salt

— 2 sticks (1 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed

— 2 large eggs, yolk and white separated, white slightly beaten

— 1 teaspoon almond extract

— 2/3 cup sliced almonds

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13×9 inch baking pan with nonstick foil. Letting foil extend about 2 inches above pan on two sides.

Mix 1 tablespoon of the sugar and the cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.

In a food processor, pulse remaining sugar, the flour and salt until blended. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add yolks, and extract, and pulse just until mixed.

Press dough into pan. Brush with egg white until moistened (you won’t use all of it). Sprinkle with almonds, then the sugar-cinnamon mixture, gently pressing them into the dough.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes until lightly browned. Cool 10 minutes in pan on wire rack.

Cookies are easier to cut while slightly warm. Lift from pan by ends of foil onto cutting board. Cut into 4 lengthwise, then 6 crosswise strips. Cut each bar diagonally in half to yield 2 triangles. Remove from foil to rack to cool completely.

As I mentioned last week, our church was having a get together after a business meeting Sunday night. The church was providing the meat and drinks and everyone else was to provide a dish.

Since I love to bake, I was going to take dessert. I started looking through my huge stack of dessert recipes and began to pull a few out of the stack I might bake.

After mulling over the ones I’d pulled out of the pile, I decided to make two different cookie recipes.

I told you about the crème Brulee bars last week. The second cookie I prepared was almond triangles.

I decided on this recipe because I like almonds and had some in the refrigerator for a while that needed to be used.

After preparing the 9×13-inch pan by lining it with nonstick foil and leaving some foil hanging over the edges, I got started making these cookies.

The recipe said to use a food processor to blend the first few ingredients. Since I don’t have a food processor, I used my Ninja blender, it has a pulse feature and I figured that would work.

After pulsing the sugar, flour and salt, I added the cubed butter and pulsed a few more times. Pulsing didn’t seem to get the coarse crumb mixture the recipe mentioned, so I held the pulse button down for a few seconds and was pleased with the results.

I added the egg yolks and almond extract and wondered how that little bit of liquid was going to moisten all of the crumbs in the blender, but to my surprise it did. Again, I held the pulse button down — but not too long — to get everything mixed.

After going through all of that, I figured if you don’t have a food processor or a pulse button on your blender, you can just mix this dough by hand. It just might take some effort to do it.

I removed the blades from the blender and pressed the mixture into a ball then began the task of pressing the dough into my baking dish. I’m not sure why you have to press the dough into a ball, I think I could have just dumped the blender contents into the pan and patted it down.

I did my best to get the mixture evenly patted out, and at this point thought this looks like shortbread dough.

I whisked the egg whites as recommended and brushed them over the crust (it really didn’t take much egg white), sprinkled the almonds and cinnamon sugar mixture on top, and gently pressed everything down into the dough.

The cookies baked for 25 minutes and then sat on a cooling rack for 10 minutes. Removing them from the pan was easy by pulling up on the overhanging foil. I placed them, still on the foil, on a large cutting board. I cut them using a big butcher knife and according to the recipe directions, but had quite a bit of difficulty because the cookies kept sticking to the knife.

In hindsight, I probably should have let them continue to cool a bit after removing them from the pan.

Even though these cookies were for Sunday, I had to try them. Just like I thought, they tasted like a shortbread cookie.

I thought they were good, but not really anything over-the-top special.

Those who I heard from at church said they were good. There were a few left over so Brad took them to work to share and they also got good reviews there.

With fellow church members’ and Brad’s co-workers’ blessings, I nailed this recipe. However, I haven’t decided if I’ll keep it for my cookbook because there are so many cookie recipes in my dessert folder, and these just weren’t all that special to me.

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.