Mary’s Pignoli

Macaroons are another basic cookie genre, found in most early Italian, French, English and American cookbooks. These pine nut macaroons are from Mary Alfano Codola, my beloved friend in Rhode Island.

They are crisp outside, rolled in a nubbly jacket of pine nuts, with a soft chewy interior.

If you can’t get the pine nuts (or find them too expensive), these cookies are also good rolled in slivered or sliced almonds. I like to coat half the cookies in pine nuts, half in almond