Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
This cookie is pretty magical. No oil, no butter and no flour yet they are probably the most delicious chocolate cookie you’ll ever have! These cookies chewy and very chocolatey with a nice nutty edge from the walnuts. Finish them off with a little flaky salt and watch them disappear. Naturally gluten free and dairy free too!
Similar to a macaron, the main ingredients in this cookie are egg whites, sugar and toasted walnuts
Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
Recipe adapted from: Food 52 & Francois Payard
Serving: Makes about 15 to 16 cookies
Ingredients:
137 grams of walnuts halves/pieces
175 grams of powdered sugar
35 grams of Dutch processed cocoa powder, I like Valrhona’s chocolate powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
Flaky salt
Method:
Preheat your oven to 350-degree oven.
While the oven preheats, measure out walnuts and spread them evenly over a lined baking sheet. Once oven is preheated, bake the walnuts for about 5 to 6 minutes or just until crisp and toasty. Do not over roast or they will get a funny roasty taste to them.
While your walnuts cool, combine powdered sugar, cocoa powder and salt and mix with a whisk until just combined.
Once walnuts are cooled, pulse them in a mini food processor until they are broken up into small pieces (the size of pearl couscous).
Note: The smaller the walnut pieces are the thicker your cookies will be. If you don’t have a mini food processer feel free to use your knife to chop up the nuts until they are small pieces.
Add the chopped nuts into your cocoa powder mixture and mix till combined.
Once the walnuts are mixed, stream in your room temperature egg whites and vanilla extract and whisk mixture until just combined. and no pockets of flour are visible.
Line 3 baking trays with parchment and using a tablespoon scoop, scoop batter onto trays, you should be able to fit 6 scoops onto one tray, leaving a good 1 inch to 1 ½ inch gap between each scoop.
Once the dough is all scooped, leave the dough to sit out for about 30 minutes (minimum).
Note: Similar to a macaron, when the dough sits out at room temperature, volume is created and a thicker cookie is produced. If you skip this step you may have a flatter cookie, which is still tasty but will lack a bit on that chewy center.
Your oven should be preheated at 350 but before putting the cookies in, reduce the temperature to 325-degree and then place cookies in oven. Placing one rack on the bottom and one on the top.
The cookies will bake for a total of 9 minutes but we will rotate the pans 2 times while they bake.
After 3 minutes: Rotate the back of pan to the front.
Note: At this point if you’re cookie hasn’t spread a lot feel free to press the dough a bit with a spatula or a measuring cup to encourage spreading.
After 6 minutes: After another 3 minutes have elapsed, switch the top pan to the bottom and bottom to top. Also rotate the pan 180 degrees from back to front for both pans. Keep the cookie in for another 3 minutes for a total of 9 minutes.
After 9 minutes, when you pull the cookies out, they should have a nice crackly glossy top.
After baking, if you find that your cookie has a few wonky edges, round them out using a small bowl or cookie cutter and making circles over the cookie until it shapes up but do this within a few minutes of the cookies coming out of the oven.
The cookies will stick to the parchment at first so slide off the parchment paper with the cookies on it onto a cookie rack and let them cool there. As they cool on the parchment, finish them off with a little bit of finishing salt. After a few minutes you can use a sharp-edged spatula to pull the cookies off the parchment.
These cookies have a tendency to stick to each other so when storing it’s best to put parchment before each layer of cookies and then place them into an air tight container.
Let these cookies rest for a day as they tend to taste the best the next day! Enjoy.
Note:
Unfortunately, there are no cup measurements for this recipe because it is just as finnicky as a macaron and needs the ingredients to be measured precisely for best results.