Chocolate with Francois - Flourless Chocolate Cookies

Month two of Chocolate with Francois and this month's recipe is Flourless Chocolate cookies. You can find the recipe on page 56 of "Chocolate Epiphany" by Francois Payard. It was chosen by Karen of Karen's Cookies, Cakes and more. If you  would like the recipe,but don't have the book, be sure to drop by Karen's blog and check it out. This was a great choice and I want to thank Karen for picking it. With all the other baking I have been doing for the holidays, this was a nice, quick, simple recipe to pull together with fabulous results.

These were easy to put together and even easier to eat! Six basic ingredients that most bakers will already have in their cupboards... cocoa, confectioners sugar, salt, walnuts, egg whites and vanilla. The Dutch-processed cocoa powder give the cookies an intense chocolate flavor. The walnuts added a nice nuttiness to each bite. Francois warns about mixing the dough too much once you add the eggs whites and I guess I must have done just that, though I only beat the dough for the three minutes instructed in the recipe.  My cookies did not spread out like the ones pictured in the book and I have to guess it's because the dough was thicker than it should have been.  My cookies were puffy and rounded on top, not flat and thin. Still delicious, but they didn't look like the ones in the book. Of course, I am the only one who knew what they looked like in the book. The people I shared the cookies with had no idea what they were supposed to look like. They only knew how yummy the cookies tasted.

The cookies bake up shiny and cracked all over. Biting into one is like biting into a brownie with walnuts. I really liked these cookies!  A lot! Chewy, chocolate-y, nutty, delicious! If you need a quick cookie sure to please the chocolate lover in your family, these are for you.

Drop by Chocolate with Francois to see what the other bakers thought of these wonderful cookies. Next month...Pine Nut Turron Cake. I must say, it looks like a decadent cake. I have already purchased the pine nuts and all the different chocolates used in the recipe. You will have to come back next month to see how it turns out.