A Culinary Misdemeanor?: Flourless Fudge Cookies

I look forward to Passover each year -- not for its religious significance (as I'm not Jewish), but for the baking challenge. It's basically just a gluten-free baking challenge, because in large part, the portion of my regular baking audience that observes Passover isn't terribly strict about it. While most will avoid flour or leavening, they generally aren't concerned about limiting themselves to ingredients that are actually certified as kosher for Passover.

This year, I kicked off my Passover baking with a recipe from King Arthur Flour for "Flourless Fudgy Cookies." This is one of the easiest recipes I've ever made. You just put powdered sugar, salt, espresso powder, cocoa powder, egg whites, and vanilla in a bowl, and mix. You can literally have a tray of cookies in the oven less than five minutes after you start. The batter is on the runny side, so it spreads quite a bit, and the cookies end up quite thin, with a crinkled top.

These cookies live up to their name -- they are moist and very fudgy, not unlike a flourless chocolate cake in cookie form. In fact, I found them to be too fudgy, and I thought that the chocolate and espresso were overwhelming. Apparently others disagreed, as a lot of tasters really enjoyed this cookie. But I don't like having my palate assaulted with so much chocolate; the combination of the espresso with the chocolate makes this cookie much more intense than simply eating a chocolate bar. I felt the same about the Mocha Cookies I made recently.

I've come up with a term to describe this sensation: ACO, or assault with a chocolate object.  (I am a lawyer, after all. When I was in law school, my student practice organization defended a lot of folks charged with ADW, or assault with a dangerous weapon. While I never did see a case where someone was assaulted with chocolate, we did handle a case where the dangerous weapon was a snowball.) Some people seem to like this chocolate overload, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Recipe: "Flourless Fudge Cookies," from King Arthur Flour.

Previous Post: "Blunt Force Chocolate: Mocha Cookies," January 12, 2012.

Comments

Louise said…
Your post made me LOL. I'd say it was a High GTW (Goodness to Work) Ratio for ACO, except you didn't care for them. It's funny how sometimes chocolate does that and other times a high dose of chocolate is outstanding. I recently made an Amish Bread Starter into a Sourdough Chocolate Cake using a KA recipe which I modified (a lot) to be more like Maida Heatter's 86 Proof Cake. The cake was so good that I froze the other two starters which I was supposed to pass along.
Richard said…
You can ACO me anytime!