Almond Chips Recipe

This design doc is for Wenny, my colleague at Google who really likes Almond chips.

Ingredients

1. Sliced almonds 1kg
2. Florentine powder 500g

You can adjust these amounts accordingly, just make sure that the almond to florentine ratio is 2:1. I stated these amounts because these are the ones I can find at Phoon Huat.

Equipments

1. Oven, preheated at 190 degree.
2. Baking paper

Steps

Each time I use 166g of almonds and 83g of florentine, so I repeated the steps for 6 times. The amount varies with the size of your baking tray.

1. Cover the baking tray with a sheet of baking paper.
2. Spread the almond slices evenly on the baking paper.
3. Toast the almonds in the oven at 190 degree for 3 to 4 minutes.
4. Mix the florentine powder with the almonds.
5. Bake in the oven again at 190 degree for another 8 to 9 minutes.
6. While it is still hot, use a knife to cut it into pieces.

Personal Notes

This may be obvious but try not to have any powder on the tray because it could stick to it and hard to remove.

If your oven is anything like mine, the result may not even. Some part can be quite brown while some part is still quite white. This is because the oven does not heat evenly, but it is okay as long as all powder has melted. On the bright side, there’s no point in being so strict about the time - each bake is a surprise! Experiment by varying the toasting and baking time by about 15 seconds and the result can be quite significant.

Finally, you can try to optimize the oven I/O. Suppose you are baking 2 trays A and B, and let the steps be 1, 2, 3 and so on. If you do sequentially, ie

A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6

It will take about 30 minutes. But a lot of time is spent waiting for A3, A5, B3, B5. Instead, you can try

A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, A4, A5, B4, B5, A6, B6

It will take about 25 minutes, which is a 5-minute improvement! This could be quite significant if you are baking lots of almond chips :)