Have you ever had one of those days where almost everything goes wrong? Those days are the worst. It’s like from the time you wake up until the time you go back to sleep that night, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Murphy’s law, right? Anyway, that’s sort of what happened with these flourless chocolate cookies. They were delicious but I messed up along the way.
Let’s give a little backstory. There’s a local restaurant here, Alleia, that John and I love. I especially love going to enjoy their flourless chocolate cake. Don’t get me wrong, Alleia has some really delicious foods (the Bolognese!) but the cake is just heavenly. It’s served with fresh fruit on the side and a cinnamon gelato that’s paired perfectly with the cake. I can’t talk about this cake enough. Some of my favorite dates with John have been setting up shop at Alleia’s bar for cake and coffee (or a cocktail depending on how I’m feeling).
My obsession with flourless chocolate foods obviously stemmed from Alleia so I wanted to try to make my own flourless desserts. My first attempt at making a flourless dessert happened a couple of years ago; it didn’t go as planned. In fact, I ended up not even posting about it on the blog. Just based off of that one experience, my track record with flourless foods have been negative. But I like a challenge so when I found a new recipe for flourless chocolate cookies on Recipe Girl, I knew I was ready to give it a go again.
Well, this time around, my experience was still not a good one. Now, let’s make one thing clear, the recipe from Recipe Girl was perfect; it is definitely not her. I can fully admit it is complete user error. I just love flourless chocolate desserts so much and wanted to nail my second attempt. Once again, I’ve come up short.
What happened with my flourless chocolate cookies
If you like warm, gooey chocolatey cookies, I’d encourage you to try this recipe. The actual recipe is pretty easy and it’s just a handful of ingredients. The cookies weren’t a complete failure, it just felt like it. I ate a couple of them; so did John. They just didn’t “plump up” the way they were supposed to. Here’s why:
Egg whites.
I used too many egg whites, which caused the cookies to spread too much. If we’re friends on Instagram, you may have noticed I shared a little video of my sad, disappointing cookies. The flavors were on point; I was simply too eager with the egg whites.
So a little word of advice to those of you who will be brave enough to try these cookies: add the egg whites one by one and decide if you need more. Take it from me, if you add too many, you’ll have sad, flourless chocolate pancakes.
