As I am not really a fan of nuts and chocolate (I know, I'm probably the only person on earth!) I thought I would give these a go substituting the walnuts with what I happened to have in the cupboard - Cadbury white chocolate chips and freeze-dried raspberries. Yum!
You'll notice that this recipe looks a little different from those linked above. I tweaked it for my purposes and the cookies worked really well.
As you can see, my cookies were crispy on the outside, and gooey on the inside. This is good!
In the background you can see the bag of freeze-dried raspberries. I bought mine from the B&P Sweet Studio on Chapel St in Melbourne. If you haven't been there before you need to go right now. Drop everything and go! It's dessert heaven! Last time we were there Julia and Kylie from the 2012 season of Masterchef we're in the kitchen whipping up delights.
Now, recipe.
Flourless Chocolate Cookies
(with freeze dried raspberries and white chocolate chips)
2 to 3 cups of pure icing sugar (NOT icing mixture)
2/3 cup of cocoa powder - I used Cadbury's Bournville because the flavour of Cadbury takes me to my happy place. Keep in mind that the flavour of the cookies directly relates to the cocoa that you use, so this really is the time to pull out your favourite.
A decent pinch of salt
2 to 4 large egg whites from free-range hens.
Half a cup of white chocolate chips
Half a cup of freeze dried raspberries
1/ Pre-heat over to 200 C. Sift cocoa, 2 cups of icing sugar and salt into mixing bowl. Thoroughly combine.
2/ Add 2 of the egg whites and whisk thoroughly. The mixture should be able to hold a ribbon trail for a second or 2. Just before soft peak stage. If needed add another egg white to loosen the mixture up, or add extra icing sugar if it needs thickening. I ended up using nearly 3 cups of sugar and 3 egg whites.
3/ Mix in your choc chips and raspberries. I pinched each raspberry as I added it to the mix, which broke them up into smaller pieces.
4/ Spoon about 3/4 of a tablespoon amounts of mixture onto baking paper (on a tray of course), allowing space for the mixture to spread a little. Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until they look something like this:
As you can see, some of mine have risen and some have puffed and cracked across the top. This is not a problem! The cookies will fall and become the cookies you see in my first photograph within the first minute of leaving the oven.
The cookies will be good for a few days, though I highly doubt that they will last that long!
Cookie yield depends on how much batter you eat and the size of your cookies. I'd say about 20 should you restrain yourself and use 3/4 of a tablespoon per cookie.
Good luck!
Note: other recipes state to use room temperature egg whites. Mine were straight out of the fridge and I had no problems. I also omitted the vanilla extract and felt it was not missed.
