Every January, the Algarve turns white. Not snow. Almond blossoms. Thousands of trees blooming against the southern sky, a gift from the Moors who planted these orchards a thousand years ago. And from those trees came these cookies.

I learned to make bolinhos de amêndoa from Dona Celeste in Loulé, a grandmother I documented who's been making them for sixty years. Her hands moved without measuring, pinching dough, shaping each cookie with the speed of someone who's done this ten thousand times. "Três coisas," she told me. Three things. Almonds, sugar, eggs. That's it. That's all you need.

The Algarve's almond sweets are different from the rest of Portugal. Here, the Moorish influence lives on in every bite. The marzipan-like texture, the orange blossom water some families add, the way the cookies stay soft and tender rather than crisp. These aren't crunchy biscuits. They're somewhere between cookie and confection, melting on your tongue.

At Mesa da Avó, I serve these with coffee at the end of the meal. They're the kind of sweet that makes people close their eyes. The kind that tastes like somewhere, not just something. If your family came from the south, these might unlock a memory you didn't know you had.