Really? These are for TV?

This Wednesday's New York Times offered a lengthy article about butter. Butter as it relates to cookies, and in this case Christmas cookies. I had always thought when making cookies the softer the better. This is not the case, says the article, because the emulsion breaks down as the butter warms. So as an exercise in butter skills my mom and I had to make cookies. It's true--there was no choice involved.

Several recipes were included in the article. We chose the Croq-Tele, French TV cookies. They are very simple to make and contain only almonds, sugar, salt, butter and flour, and are then pressed into these lovely pyramid shapes. The resulting cookies are soft and sandy, rich with buttery almond flavor. If these are for the TV I can't imagine what treats fancier occasions warrant.