The Name Sells Them Short: Brutti Ma Buoni

We have an attorney from Italy visiting our office for six months, and I decided I should go Italian for the office party welcoming him and our current crop of college interns. I had bookmarked a recipe for Brutti Ma Buoni from Food & Wine a while ago, and this seemed like the perfect occasion to dig it out.

Translating literally to "ugly but good," brutti ma buoni are flourless nut cookies. The version of the recipe I used has only five ingredients: hazelnuts, powered sugar, salt, egg whites, and vanilla. The recipe couldn't be easier -- you just grind the dry ingredients in the food processor and stir in the wet ingredients. Then you drop the dough onto a baking sheet (I used a #50 scoop and got 21 cookies per batch) and bake.

The cookies were not terribly attractive, but I didn't think they crossed the line to "ugly." My husband and I both tried a cookie shortly out of the oven and neither of us was very impressed. The outside was golden and crunchy but the inside was damp and seemed uncooked. At that point I was thinking a better name for the cookies would be "look okay but taste weird," but I left them out on racks overnight to cool and went to bed.

The following morning I tried another cookie and it was completely different. The inside was super chewy, definitely cooked through, and it had a smooth and sweet hazelnut flavor. I actually found the cookies to be quite addictive.

I looked at several other brutti ma buoni recipes online and they all involved folding nuts into beaten egg whites; they seemed to be more like meringue cookies. There was nothing meringue-like about these cookies, and they were not airy at all. The dough was very dry and barely held together before baking. But the finished product was fantastic. Plus, these cookies are so easy, and except for the need to peel hazelnuts, they are completely non-fuss. They are better than "good": the name doesn't give them enough credit!

Recipe: "Brutti Ma Buoni" from Food & Wine.