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1
Blend the flour, baking powder, and butter together in a bowl until it looks kind of like sand, using your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Next, blend in the sugar with your fingers. Finally, add the egg and vanilla. I still use my hands for this but you can also use a wooden spoon, and mush, smash, stir, and push the dough until it comes together into a ball (it often seems a bit on the dry side).
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2
Once you've formed it into a ball, cover it with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight. When you are ready to bake, let the dough warm up a bit; otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to work with.
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3
Break off pieces of the dough, and roll them into balls that are about 1 to 1 1/2 inches across, and put on cookie sheets. Once all the dough is made into balls, press your thumb into each to make an indentation. Most of the cookies will crack around the edges as you press into them. If they totally fall apart, just smash them up and roll them into new balls, but if there are just some cracks, that's part of the look.
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4
Brush the tops of the cookies with the egg white to glaze. Then sprinkle some pearl sugar and/or chopped almonds into each indentation. (Pearl sugar is a special type of sugar for decoration that looks like tiny white rocks, or something of the sort. If you can't find any, you can use just finely chopped almonds.)
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5
Bake the cookies at 350u00b0 F for about 16 minutes, until golden. Move to a cooling rack and allow to cool. These cookies are delicious with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, or a mug of hot spiced wine. However, they are the absolute very best as a snack while you're out on the cross-country ski trails, if you happen to be a cross-country skier. They keep for a week or two sealed in cookie tins, and they also freeze and defrost well, if you want to make them ahead.
