Currently baking out of Great Cookies by Carole Walter

After the four lemon curd cakes I made a few weeks ago for a friend’s daughter’s graduation party, I had a bunch of egg whites to use up. Browsing through Great Cookies, I had a choice of these cookies or vanilla French macroons. Hmmm. Chocolate or no chocolate? Who was I kidding? Chocolate all the way.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with these cookies. There’s no flour, no butter and no oil in these cookies. There is, however, a lot of chocolate and egg whites. Eight egg whites get whipped up with a cup of sugar into a meringue. To that meringue, you add 12 ounces of melted bittersweet chocolate, cocoa powder, a bit of vanilla extract, corn syrup and hot water. Oh, and nuts. The recipe calls for two cups of coarsely chopped walnuts, which I didn’t have, but I did have almonds.

The batter came together pretty easily and was so chocolatey. This recipe is from the “Big Boys” chapter, so these cookies are meant to be big. I scooped half of the batter into large mounds, then did the rest slightly smaller. According to the instructions, you are supposed to flatten them out slightly. I tried, but the batter just stuck to the spoon I was using, so I left them mounded and they baked up just fine.

Once the cookies are baked, you are supposed to brush them with a chocolate glaze. I was feeling lazy, so I left off the glaze and didn’t miss it at all. These cookies are light, almost melting in the mouth, with a deep chocolate punch and a crunch from the nuts. They didn’t keep as well as I would have hoped. They softened quite a bit (the contrast between the slightly crunchy exterior and the soft interior was one of the things I really liked about these cookies) and tended to pick up off flavors.

Currently baking from Great Cookies by Carole Walter

Can one have too many cookie cookbooks? I’m still looking for that answer, mostly by buying more cookie cookbooks.

Great Cookies by Carole Walter is, as the title suggests, all about cookies. The gamut runs from the standard chocolate chip cookie (although Walter gives you seven or eight different variations of chocolate chip cookies) to the more unusual cookies, such as a basler brunsli, a Swiss cookie.

I’ve had this cookbook for a number of years, but have only made a handful of recipes out of it. This first cookie, Zach’s Chocolate Coconut Devils, was one of the first recipes I tried, and it quickly became a favorite of mine. It’s an easy recipe that delivers big fudgy chocolate flavor.

The recipe calls for three different kinds of chocolate (cocoa powder, bittersweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate), a bit of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and, of course, coconut. The recipe calls for processing the sweetened, shredded coconut in a food processor to chop it a bit. I usually skip this step and just use the coconut as is.

Warm out of the oven, these cookies are like super moist brownies. As they cool down and firm up, they become more fudgy and chewy. Either way, it is extremely easy to eat too many of these cookies in one setting.