Thursday, July 3, 2008

Chocolate Chewies

This is a flourless chocolate cookie, which is gorgeously crackly, chewy, and deeply chocolatey. Great for those who can't have flour for some reason. It's low fat, but does anyone really care?? It's still full of sugar and is nutritionally somewhat devoid. Except for the fact that chocolate has flavnoids and other beneficial compounds, and eating chocolate makes one happy. Happy is good.


Chocolate Chewies
Ingredients:
32 ounces powdered sugar
8 oz cocoa powder. I prefer non-dutch processed for this, since I think the flavor is more interesting in a fairly naked cookie.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 cup of egg whites - if you end at an egg under a cup, crack another, erring on too much egg white.
1 tablespoon vanilla


Method:
Preheat oven to 350F.
Put parchment paper, silpat mats, or more grease than you think reasonable on 2 big cookie sheets. Let's just realize non-stick is a figment of the imagination.
Sift together the dry ingredients.
Mix together whites and vanilla with a fork in a vessel with a spout.
Stick dry ingredients into a mixer. Start on low/medium with the paddle attachment (say 2-3 on a Kitchenaid).
Slowly, slowly, slllooooowwwwllly pour in the egg mixture. Do you remember when I said slowly?? Literally dribble it in. Every 1/4 cup stop and scrape the sides.
Mixture will look dry and just wrong until the very end.
Place about 1 tablespoon each on the the cookie sheets, about 12 per sheet.
Bake 6 minutes, then pop out, reverse top/bottom and front/back, and bake 6 more minutes.
Let cool 1-2 minutes on the cookie sheet, until they're a bit hard, then move to wire racks to finish cooling.

Voila! Low-fat, gluten free cookies. But never tell anyone that.

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