Instructions

1. I start off by measuring the pistachios and the cranberries and dumping them onto a cutting board where I chop them up together. I place these chopped up in a small bowl for easy pouring into the mixer as it is running. I then measure and sift the dry ingredients and also put those into a smallish bowl to dump into the mixing bowl. Then I chop up the butter and put it into the mixing bowl. I then add the sugar and blend these up coarsely. I add the 1/2 t. of almond extract at this point. I have the mixer set on the lowest speed while these are mixing up I add the pistachio/cranberry mixture as it is mixing. Once that looks like it is starting to mix into the butter/sugar mixture I add the flour mixture a heaping tablespoon at a time and then dump the last bit in. At this point it will be necessary to bump up the mixer up to the second speed. You are also going to have to stop the mixer regularly and push the mixture out of the blades. I have to do this several times. After this appears to be pretty well mixed together, i.e. no big obvious hunks of butter, I pull out the kitchen scale. At this point, I turn the oven on to 300 degrees F. No higher than this! I have a small bowl on the scale and I measure out between 20-21 grams of the cookie dough. I place these blobs onto 2 baking sheets which I have lined with parchment paper. These work well because after cooking I simply wipe down the parchment paper and reuse the paper a LOT. After I have measured out the 32 (or so) blobs of dough, I then take each blob and roll it by hand into a ball. After balling up all the blobs I then use my fingers to press down the dough to make a flatter cookie. No need to press too much, you don't want them too thin. I place the two cookie sheets in the preheated oven on two separate racks, slightly staggering the sheets. Then I set the timer for precisely 26 minutes. That may seem like a long time but at 300 degrees it works. Keep an eye on them because 26 minutes is what works in my oven but it may not work in yours. You will want the cookies to be lightly browned on the edges only, not on the top. I let them cool 2 minutes on the cookie sheets before using a small spatula to place them on a rack to cool. TBH these cookies taste best when cooled and even kept in the fridge for storage.