Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

It's been so long since I downloaded the PDF of this flourless peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie recipe for that I don't even remember where I found it (almost 2 years to be exact). Finally decided to try it as part of a birthday present for a friend.

I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, except I left out the peanut chunks. I made a double batch so that I'd have some for myself too. They are more crumbly than a normal cookie. I generally prefer chewy cookies but I guess with no flour and no butter, that's not really going to happen. I also overcooked a few of them, as you can see in the last picture, but oh well. Still very tasty!

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Walnut Swirl Bread

I've made this bread, from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, a couple times now. Felt like making it again. Makes great french toast. This time I added some flaxseed meal into the starter.

Not much more to say than that.....

I made the starter doughs on Saturday per the recipe. Then you mix them together with the final ingredients to make the final dough, then let it rise. In this picture, it has already risen, then you flatten it into a square, put some cinnamon sugar on it, and roll it up to make the swirl inside...

This is what it looked like rolled up, in the loaf pan, before the 2nd rise....

and after the 2nd rise....

and out of the oven....the loaf weighs TWO POUNDS!!! It doesn't look like it should, but it's heavy for its size.

and sliced open....

and delicious! I think this is the third or so time I've made this bread and this is the best one by far. Really tender. I think maybe because I used white whole wheat flour instead of regular hard wheat flour. Anyway, Awesome.

So this is the end of the crazy cooking weekend of April 2010. I'm impressed with myself that I actually managed to get these posts up in a timely manner. Not sure what I will embark on next, but I do know that the library is holding four more Alice Medrich (aka, CHOCOLATE) books for me, with a fifth and a King Arthur Flour Whole Grain book on the way!

By the way, as I made this post, Anthony Bourdain's Food Porn 2 episode is airing. He was at a steakhouse in NYC with a 24-pound perfectly-cooked prime (truly prime) rib. In HD. I want it.

Chocolate Nibby Espresso Cookies

Recently took Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, which is all about cooking with really good dark chocolate, out of the library after having made brownies from the book as posted by one of my favorite blogs Smitten Kitchen. Not too many of the recipes really struck me, but I scanned a few to save, this being one of them. I had bought some cocoa nibs not long ago and had no idea what to do with them, so this recipe seemed perfect. The "espresso" comes from ground coffee beans. I didn't have unsweetened chocolate, but luckily she provides substitution instructions for using 70%, etc., chocolate instead.

When I made the dough on Saturday, I was worried because it was more like a batter than a cookie dough. But the recipe called for it to sit in the fridge anywhere from an hour to four days. So I figured we'd see how it turned out overnight.

Of course, it had a lot of melted butter and chocolate in it so I knew it would harden, and of course, it hardened too much so I left it out to warm up a bit. Then I got impatient so I made a mess digging and scooping and whatnot. Anyway, this is what they looked like beforehand:

Cooked them about 9 min.....as you can see they spread a bit and blistered a little on the top, but I could tell they were still quite soft inside. Fine by me, I'd rather undercook than overcook.

Tried putting some chocolate covered coffee beans I had lying around in some of them while they were still hot...

Needless to say, they're amazing. There's not quite enough coffee flavor, but it's there. And the nibs add a cocoa-y crunch. Delicious.

Flourless Sugarless Chocolate "Cake"

I took this recipe from a Montignac book I got from the library. I promptly returned the book without copying the recipe. d'ooohhhhhhh. You can find a good enough reproduction here though. What I basically did was halve the recipe and make it in individual pyrex bowls, for a more manageable portion size. It's really pretty tasty and I am all for recipes that have only 2 ingredients and really rely on the quality.

The key is of course the chocolate. This was 72% tastiness from Trader Joe's. When you can get 500 grams of it there (or Fresh & Easy) for $3.98, why eat anything else? :D


Melted over a double boiler on the stovetop:


I don't have anything of the eggs.... and I'm not sure why. Sorry about that LOL

So this is what they looked like, right before going into the oven (at a high heat for a short time)




And this is right after coming out of the oven - i mean right after - they are still puffy. That went down as they cooled.



After refrigerating for a few hours, I turned it out onto a plate and this is what it looks like. A fluffy yet dense and rich cakelike dessert delicacy.



Melt some chocolate for a ganache and spread it on top and bam, delicious low-glycemic dessert with no added sugar besides what's in the dark chocolate. And man, really tasty.

Chocolate Espresso Shortbreads

In my new addiction to Stumble, a great Firefox add-on that shows you sites that match you're interests, I've been brought to a lot of cooking sites. One in particular has some really amazing-looking stuff, and i signed up for the email list, so when I got this delivered to my inbox, i knew I was gonna break down and make it - and probably sooner rather than later ;)

So, of course, mine did not come out as pretty, but what I did was halve the recipe to control the fatty unhealthy goodness I was about to concoct (in other words, if I only made half as many shortbreads, I could only eat half as many shortbreads ;)), and I think it worked out pretty well. I don't have instant espresso so I used about a tablespoon and a half of regular pre-made mokka pot espresso. I didn't really taste the coffee in the finished product unfortunately, but I didn't want to add more than that in case it'd throw off the recipe with too much liquid.

Of course, I am too lazy to get all measuring and stuff, probably to the cookies' detriment. But oh well. They taste good and are very delicate and tender, they almost melt in your mouth because of the powdered sugar and very little mixing the recipe calls for. Baking is more fun now that i've figured out my oven runs a good 50 degrees too hot - no more burned cookie bottoms with raw middles, hooray!