BAKED Sunday Mornings: Malted Vanilla (and Chocolate) Milkshakes

An easy Baked Sunday Mornings recipe!  It has been super hot around LA this past week and so a recipe which requires no oven and results in a delicious milkshake makes it a prefect recipe for a hot summer day.  I promised my son a milkshake and he was holding out for chocolate, so I adapted this recipe a little bit, using chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla.  I still used the vanilla bean, so it had a nice vanilla, chocolate and malted flavor all mixed together.  If you are looking for a great milkshake recipe, I recommend this one.  It got the seal of approval from my five year old and from me!

You can find the recipe here and check out what all the other bakers did.

BAKED Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Peanut Butter Spread

So I might loose all my foodie cred for telling you this but I don't like Nutella. I honestly don't understand the appeal. When I saw this week's recipe was chocolate hazelnut spread I was not excited. However, I do love peanut butter and when I had the idea to replace the hazelnuts with peanuts, then I was super excited!

I urge anyone who loves the chocolate peanut butter combo to do this. It is so easy and delicious. You just whir peanuts, cocoa powder, sugar and a bit of oil in the food processor and you come out with this rich and yummy spread. 

I also used the spread to make scones, based on the Nutella scones from baked. Instead of chopped hazelnuts, I used mini chocolate peanut butter cups. Insane!

Check out what some of the other bloggers did here.

BAKED Sunday Morning: Black and White Cookies

I am a New Yorker.  No matter where I have lived, whether it be Connecticut, Texas or now LA, I have always identified with and been at home in New York. Black and White cookies are one of those things that people always identify with New York and that you can get in every corner deli and bakery.  Unfortunately for the iconic black and white cookie, most of the ones that you buy on the street in NYC are dry, crumbly and generally tasteless with too sweet frosting.

These cookies are the total opposite of that.  They taste like what you want a black and white cookie to taste like, only better.  They are soft and flavorful with a slight crunch on the outside and a distinctly vanilla frosting and a distinctly chocolate frosting.  Neither frosting is too sweet and it is a nice compliment to the only slightly sweet cookie.  Someone once said that the key to a true New York City black and white is lemon zest in the cookie batter, which I think adds to the flavor and keeps them from being cloyingly sweet.

These were pretty simple to put together.  The batter is something between a cookie and a cake and you scoop it with an ice cream scooper to get large but not obscenely huge cookies.  After baking you mix up the vanilla frosting and then take half of that and mix in the cocoa powder for the chocolate side.  My frosting was a little drippy (as you can see from the photo) but it set up nicely and I was able to stack and store these with minimal trouble.  

I feel like black and white cookies are one of those things that seem like they would be a lot of work, but in the end are not.  I only used three bowls and a few measuring cups, a near record for a Baked recipe.  You can find the recipe here and be sure to check out what the other bakers did.

The Best Passover Cookies Ever

So remember back in my previous post when I said I wasn't really planning to make any new desserts this year?  Well, I just can't help myself...and you shouldn't either.  These are, hands down, the best Passover cookies I have ever tasted (and they rank up there with non-Passover cookies too).  A friend brought these to our seder and everyone devoured them in an instant.  It is great to have a recipe where people eat it on Passover and say how great it is, not just great for Passover.  Be sure to use really good chocolate, since that is the primary flavor of the cookies.  I also used matzah cake meal instead of matzah meal, since it is ground a little finer, but I think either would work.  The good news is that there are four more days of Passover, so you can make these!  You can find them on Martha Stewart's website.

New Passover Dessert: Chocolate Idiot Cake

The thing about Passover desserts is, when you find one that works, you really want to stick with it.  So many Passover dessert recipes are really terrible and you don't know until you bite into it, so when I find a good one, I tend to make it every year.

However, at the last minute this year, I decided I wanted something chocolate to go with our usual berry crisp.  I thought the best course of action would be to find a flourless chocolate cake that was not Passover in any way, and make it  for the seder.

After a short google, I found this flourless chocolate cake from David Lebovitz.  Since I trust the man with all ice cream, I figure he probably also knows cake.  And, since this cake is called Chocolate Idiot Cake, I figured the chances of screwing it up are small.  

This cake was very, very easy to make.  It is just chocolate, butter (margarine in my case), sugar and eggs and then you put it in a water bath.  The cake comes out creamy and very, very rich (and pretty flat, but that is par for the course).  A small slice does the trick and is a delicious chocolate end to the seder (and if you are having a vegetarian seder, I highly recommend a dollop of whipped cream).  You can find the recipe here.

Too Many Girl Scouts? Thin Mint Muffins!

Growing up in New York City, there were no girl scouts.  Finding girl scout cookies was like striking gold.  You never knew from year to year if you were going to get some, unless you happened upon a secret spot with girls from outside Manhattan selling the beloved cookies.  In college, I was a Hebrew school teacher.  One of the girls in my class asked if I would buy cookies from her.  Elated with finding the elusive cookie, I ordred four boxes.  The following week, the other seven girls in my class showed up with cookie forms and I ened up with almost 40 boxes of girl scout cookies.  Who knew that everyone was a girl scout?  Good thing I lived in a college dorm, where they were snapped up almost immediately.

Ever since then, I am more careful about my cookie ordering.  Since girl scout cookies are often delivered in the run up to Passover, I have to be careful not to order too many (let alone the fact that it is not good for my wallet or my waistline).  

This year, I ended up with an extra box of thin mints that I knew would not be eaten before Passover.  At the same moment, I happened upon this recipe from The Food Librarian.  This recipe chops up thin mints and sticks them inside a moist, chocolatly muffin.  I brought these too a work function, and even though they feel more like dessert than breakfast, they were snapped up.  I made some large ones and some minis, for people who just wanted to try them.

Check out this recipe here.  You could put all kinds of other things in the muffin base, if you don't happen to have thin mints lying around.

This is probably the last non-Passover recipe we will post here for a while.  I will probably make some of my standards, which you can find here and here.  I also plan to make this lemon mousse cake for Shabbat, when we are so over eating meat all the time and are looking for something dairy and delicious.  The Torta Del Re, made with matzah meal not flour, is also a great option (at the bottom of the post).  

BAKED Sunday Mornings: Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Budino

Happy Purim!  If you came here looking for some hamentashen (triangle cookies), you can find them here or here or here.  I didn't have it in me to make any this year, although I've always wanted to try my friend Shoshana's S'more Hamentashen.  However, I've been away and I have a huge Purim program today, so no hamentashen for us this year.

But, I do have some pudding for you (which reminded me of Dorie's Split Level pudding but not quite as rich).  Technically this is a budino, which is apparently an Italian custard or pudding, so pudding is fine.  Budino just makes it sound super fancy.  Despite the fact that this pudding used many, many bowls and pans, it was quite easy to make.  The thickening power mostly comes from cornstarch, so you can't screw it up.  My pudding was a little lumpy, but I don't really mind.  I really enjoyed the flavor of these puddings, both separately and together and I love the way the vanilla one looked with all the vanilla bean seeds sprinkled throughout.  If you want a dessert that looks impressive but is easy to make, you should totally try this.  You can get the recipe here and head over to Baked Sunday Mornings to see what everyone else did.

Happy Purim!  

BAKED Sunday Mornings: Sunday Night Cake

This cake is called Sunday Night Cake because it is something that you can just throw together for an informal Sunday night gathering.  Nothing fancy and no great hassel.  When I first read the description of the cake and the frosting, I thought it would be like Dorie's Cinnamon Squares, a cinnamon cake with a chocolate frosting.  However, Dorie's cake has a lot more cinnamon punch and a richer chocolate frosting.  This cake is only faintly cinnamon and the flavor of the frosting is a more mild chocolate.  The Baked boys called this frosting a pudding and although I have never made a pudding like this, I can see what they meant.  I don't think I would want to eat it with a spoon, but together with the cake it was really good.  Don't skip the step of putting the frosted cake in the fridge.  My frosting was kind of grainy and strange tasting, but once I put it in the fridge, it was smooth and tasted really good.

I enjoyed this cake, especially in its simplicity.  The cake was tender and moist, with a good, warm flavor with a hint of cinnamon and the frosting balanced it nicely with a hit of chocolate.  My husband (the non-chocolate eater) enjoyed the cake without the frosting too.  One note...I didn't have the right size pan, so I made it in a slightly smaller pan and cooked it a little longer and it was totally fine.

Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings to see what everyone else has done and to get the recipe.  

Update: I have learned that I misread the frosting recipe and I used bittersweet chocolate instead of unsweetened. If worked fine and the frosting was great after a stint in the fridge.

The Long-Awaited Brownies

So this is one of those recipes that I make all the time but for some reason never got around to blogging about. I made them last week for Baked Goods Friday, but I forgot to take a picture – the picture is from first semester of my senior year of college. That’s how long I’ve been meaning to blog about these brownies. 

What do I love about these brownies? Um, how about EVERYTHING. First of all, they are made with almost an entire box of butter. You simply can’t go wrong there. Second of all, you get to brown butter. I’ve been able to brown butter successfully for a few years now, but it still feels like a major accomplishment every time. Third of all, there’s the combination of chocolate, caramel-y flavor (the browned butter), and salt, courtesy of the brittle on top. Oh yes, fourth of all, the brittle. It is so good that you may want to make extra to just sit around in your freezer and eat it as a snack. Fifth of all, you can make the brownies in advance and then frost them at your leisure - the perfect way to jazz up an otherwise plain and homely brownie. Sixth of all, if you don’t feel like making brownies (in which case, what is wrong with you, you fool), you can also use the frosting and brittle on a chocolate cake to delightful effect. 

Okay, hopefully that is enough to convince you of the greatness of these brownies. The brownie recipe is here (although feel free to substitute your own favorite brownie recipe); the frosting and brittle recipe is here. 

Not Pretty, but Totally Delicious: Four Star Chocolate Pretzel Challah Bread Pudding

Some things are really hard to photograph.  Bread pudding is one of them.  It just looks like a mushy, lumpy mess.  But let me tell you -- this is the best tasting mushy, lumpy mess I have ever tasted.  This is Dorie Greenspan's Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding, which I made with an LA specialty, pretzel challah.  Pretzel challah is challah on the inside, but with a soft-pretzel crust on the outside.  Yummy.

Every week, my son's preschool has a fundraiser where you can buy a challah for Shabbat.  Since we love challah and we want to support the school, we signed up.  However, it has meant that our freezer often gets super full of challah because we don't always have Shabbat dinner at home.  This bread pudding came about because I simply could not fit another challah in the freezer and I'm so glad I made it.  It takes about 10 minutes to throw together (if you don't count the time waiting for the bread to become stale) and the only complicated thing about it is that it is baked in a water bath, so you need a pan big enough to hold a 9x13 inch pan.

This was completely delicious and decadent   I loved the combination of the slightly salty pretzel challah with the sweet and chocolatey pudding.  It was a real treat.  If you find yourself with an extra pretzel challah, I highly recommend making this, although I assume it would be delicious with any kind of bread.  You can find the recipe here.

BAKED Sunday Morning: Malted Milk Chocolate Pots de Creme

Well, I have kind of fallen down on my Baked Sunday Mornings participation.  Things have been a little crazy around here and the idea of making a super complicated recipe hasn't be that appealing.  However, when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to make it.  I love Whoppers, milk chocolate, malt and pudding, so it seemed like this recipe had everything.  To top it off, it was super easy.  It was calling my name.

I wish I could say I was in love with these, since they seemed so promising.  However, mine came out way too salty and it overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the milk chocolate (public service announcement -- you have to use really good milk chocolate, not just a Hershey bar.  I used Scharffen Berger).  It seems that the Baked boys like things much saltier than I do, since this has happened before.  I hope to try them again and cut the salt a bunch.

The other issue I had was totally my fault, in that I took them out of the oven too early.  After 25 minutes they were still pretty jiggly, but I thought they might set in the fridge.  Turns out that was not too be.  They weren't totally watery, but they did not have that custardy texture I was looking for.  I haven't given up hope though, and will be trying these again one day.

Check over at Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what everyone else did.

Further Adventures With Peppermint Extract

Here's something kind of fun that I made today - no reason, I just had nothing better to do and wanted to use up my peppermint extract from the previous post. They're pretty easy to make and look quite cute and impressive. Naturally, I didn't have any shortening in the house (duuuuh) so I substituted coconut oil, which seems to have done the trick. I also put a little corn syrup in the melted chocolate to make it nice n' shiny. I would make these again but next time I'd put in more peppermint extract, and not just because I'm trying to get rid of it - the peppermint flavor is not that strong. I might also try putting the peppermint extract in the chocolate. This is a yummy, simple, wintry treat, excellent for a cold day like today. You can find the recipe here.

Make It Out of Peppermint Barky Barky

Hanukkah is over – time for the real holidays to begin! (Worst Jew ever, right here.) Time to turn off the Maccabeats and whatever the hell this is and turn on Elf. Yes, it’s true, I love cultural Christmas, in no small part because of the food, and I love the food in no small part because of peppermint bark. Over the last couple of years it’s become a tradition of mine to make peppermint bark, which is beautiful, festive, delicious, and simple to make. Well, the making part is simple; it’s the cutting that’s tricky. Every year, the pieces splinter apart when I cut them, or the white chocolate separates from the dark. No good!

This year at the family Hanukkah party (I knew that holiday was good for something!), my Aunt Nancy gave my cousin a little tin of yummy homemade peppermint bark. I asked her how she was able to cut it into such neat squares, and she divulged two secrets. One, add some cream to the dark chocolate. Two, don’t wait until it’s completely hardened to cut it. Now they weren’t that secret, as far as secrets go. I had seen some recipes that included the cream, and common sense told me to cut the bark when it was still a bit soft. Nevertheless, every recipe I’ve seen specifically instructs the baker to wait until the chocolate is totally hardened before cutting it. Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to go with Aunt Nancy’s method. And I was so pleased with the results! At first I was concerned about the dark chocolate, because when I added the cream it became very thick and ganache-like, and it’s true that it didn’t spread as much as it should have, but it firmed up okay, and provided a much firmer base for the bark than just pure chocolate. I put the bark in the fridge for about 20 minutes, cut it, and then put it back for further hardening, and it turned out great. I put the pieces in glass jars, tied ‘em up with pretty ribbons, and gave them to current and former coworkers as holiday gifts. (For Kaitlyn, last seen being a vegan on this blog here, I made vegan peppermint bark, which is literally just dark chocolate studded with pieces of candy cane. I did look for vegan white chocolate but it was impossible to find – there was one place that sold it 3.5 ounces for $17, but that seemed excessive. And it turns out Kaitlyn doesn’t even like white chocolate so I’m glad I didn’t waste my money.) Anyway, it was a big success. To thank Aunt Nancy for the awesome tips, you should check out her Web site, it's pretty cool!: http://www.mylifestylecareer.com/ 

Aunt Nancy’s Peppermint Bark

One pound of dark chocolate

One pound of white chocolate

Half a cup of cream

Peppermint extract

Candy canes or peppermint candies, in pieces (I put them in a bag and crushed them repeatedly with the bottom of the tea kettle. You may find a more elegant method, but probably not one as satisfying.)

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Melt dark chocolate and cream in a double boiler; mix until the chocolate thickens. Add peppermint extract to taste. Spread the dark chocolate mixture on the aluminum foil and refrigerate until mostly firm.

Melt white chocolate in a double boiler; add peppermint extract to taste. Pour on top of dark chocolate sheet and sprinkle on peppermint pieces. Refrigerate until mostly firm. Remove from fridge and cut into pieces, then return to fridge until completely firm.

Peace on Earth

Right now, the world could use a little extra peace.  If these cookies help us get there, all the better.  If these delicious salty, sweet chocolate cookies help spur us to action to make the world a better place, to bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be, then these cookies will have really earned their keep.

These world peace cookies, from Dorie Greenspan, were my favorite cookies that she made in her shop.  It is awesome that they can be made at home and turn out just as well.  The dough is a little crumbly, but if you can get past that, they are tender and deeply chocolatly with a hit of salt that puts them over the top.  These are some of the best cookies I have ever made or eaten and I hope they bring the world one step closer to the peace it so desperately needs.  You can find the recipe here.

Double Chocolate Chip Cranberry Bread: A Thanksgiving Morning Treat

One of the reasons that the baking sisters started this blog was to stay connected when I moved across the country.  However far I get away from NYC, my heart is always there and I am heart broken to watch what is going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  Please consider making a donation to the Red Cross, Bend the Arc or the Educational Alliance (they do lots of fabulous work on the lower east side, both to address immediate needs and find long term solutions to poverty). 

One of the best things about New York City is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and one of our family Thanksgiving traditions is to go to the parade (outside, not watching on TV or in someone's apartment like wimps) and then go home, frozen, and eat hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.  As we got older, we were less interested in going to the parade, but the hot chocolate and cookie tradition remained.  This year, we are taking my son to the parade for the first time, and we will undoubtably need that hot chocolate and cookies afterwards.

However, if you are not as wedded to this particular tradition, this cake would make an excellent Thanksgiving morning treat.  The tart cranberries are seasonally appropriate, and they offset the sweetness of the cake nicely.  You can make it ahead and it freezes nicely, so you don't have to add it to your list of things to make on Thanksgiving day.  Also, this is technically called "bread" so you can eat it for breakfast.  You can find the recipe here on the Baking Bites blog.

What's Black and Orange and Sweet All Over?

Hi all! I'm happy to report for all those concerned (none of you) that Rachel and I are safe and sound. Those of us on the Upper West Side were fortunate not to suffer any damage from the hurricane, and now we're doing our best to help those who did. If you feel so moved, please donate to the Red Cross before reading today's post.

There were many sad things about the hurricane, one of which was that it coincided with Halloween. Luckily, Chris Christie is on it; he has, by executive order, officially proclaimed Halloween in New Jersey to be next Monday, the 5th. Here in New York, however, it was still on October 31st, which meant the slutty pumpkins were out in full force, the kids were trick-or-treating at stores along Amsterdam Avenue, and some doodoohead in our apartment building stole the entire bowl of candy we left out when none of us were home. It also meant it was time for a special Halloween edition of Baked Goods Friday at the Oxford University Press office! After many successful years of Halloween cupcakes, brownies, and Oreo cheesecakes, I knew that I needed something thematic. I had been wanting to try my hand at black-and-white cookies anyway, so I thought, AHA! What if I adapted them to make them...black and ORANGE cookies? For black and orange are the traditional Halloween colors.

So I made a batch of the black and white cookies from Baked Explorations, but those are best not discussed (let's just say that I ran out of flour and had to substitute 1 cup of semolina for a cup of all-purpose. And that was one of the less unfortunate things I had to do. I never even bothered frosting them, though they tasted rather good, kind of like cornbread. Who knew.) Then I turned to good ole King Arthur Flour, mostly because I had all the ingredients onhand that I needed for their icing. Very scientific. Apparently black and white cookies are sometimes called half-moon cookies, which for some reason seems unbelievably goyische. Anyway, it was pretty straightforward. The cookies came out nice and cakey, which as everyone knows is the main criteria by which a good black and white cookie must be judged. The frosting never really hardened; I don't know that it was supposed to but that's really one of my favorite parts of your typical New York deli black-and-white. Also, the white (I mean orange) frosting didn't taste that good. Maybe it was the dyes from the frosting - Wilton burgundy mixed with Wilton yellow - but it had a bit of chemical aftertaste. Oh well, I guess that's what you get when you choose a frosting based on the ingredients that are already in your cabinet. The chocolate, however, was delicious, and they were both very easy to spread. Of course they came apart in between Amsterdam Avenue and the office, as cookies tend to do, but they were still a big hit at the office. You can find the recipe here.

P.S. If you were looking for an answer to the riddle in the title of this post, it was Halloween. Yes. Halloween. AahOOOOOOOH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC44rTFo4Zk 

Chocolate Swirls of Deliciousness

So, my maternity leave is fast coming to an end.  Faster than I would really like.  I don't think I am cut out to be a full time stay at home mom, but I did really enjoy being home with the baby these past few months.  It was sad to drop him off at daycare this morning, even though I know he will be well cared for and even though it was only for a couple of hours (today).

For all the nice things about maternity leave, one thing I really didn't have a lot of time to do was bake.  Almost everything I posted these last few months, I made before the baby came.  However, since I will be going back to work next week, I decided it was time to go back to baking.  Also, there is nothing like a little (or a lot) of chocolate to take the sting out.

I have had my eye on these chocolate swirl biscuits from Bakerella for a while.  Please check out the photos of this recipe on her site.  You will want to eat them off the screen!  Since we were out of eggs, and this recipe only calls for one yolk in the glaze, which is also optional, it seemed like a good time to try them.  

I am one of those people who can be intimidated by working with dough, especially rolling it out and then rolling it into a jelly roll shape.  However, I found this dough to be easy to work with and these biscuits are very forgiving.  Part of their charm is that they don't have to look perfect!  It was fairly straightforward to roll out the dough (which I did on wax paper to help with the next step), spread on the filling, roll them up jelly roll style and slice.  Then it was just a matter of waiting until they were cool enough to eat!

These were delicious.  The dough is not very sweet, and so it balances nicely with the chocolate and sugar in the filling.  I used a mixture of milk and dark chocolate, because that is what I had and I thought they were fantastic.  They are soft like a biscuit, with chocolate deliciousness in every bite.  Next time, I might put in some cinnamon just to spice things up.  And yes, there will be a next time.

You can find the recipe here, on Bakerella's website.

The Final Baked Goods Friday (For Some)

Big news in Baking Sisters land - I started a new job at Oxford University Press this week. It's going well so far, with one exception. My reputation as a baker had apparently preceded me, which is great, but when I brought in Dorie's classic molasses cookies for Baked Goods Friday, no one was eating them! I was confused and dismayed, until my cubiclemate said to me, "It's so funny that you put it out right when you got here. Usually, people wait until after lunch." I, of course, replied, "Don't worry - I will train you to eat cheesecake at 9 a.m." Luckily, all the cookies were gone by 12:30, but it was a little touch-and-go for a while there. 

It was made especially galling by the fact that a number of my friends back at Basic were contacting me all day and telling me how sad they were not to have their weekly sweet fix. Now there's an office that really knows how to appreciate its 9 a.m. cheesecake. I knew that I had to make a special treat for my last day of work, and I settled on a cake recipe from Amy's Bread that had gotten rave reviews when I made for Rachel's graduation party. I don't usually make cakes for Baked Goods Friday because they're hard to transport, but I figured that this was worth it.

Here's the trick about this cake (or rather, this cake's frosting) - it's made with poured fondant, so you must remember to make that at least 24 hours before you want to make the frosting. The cake itself is pretty straightforward and quite delicious. It's got a moist density that reminded Rachel and me of the Entenmann's chocolate cupcakes we used to have on our half-birthdays. (Appropriately enough, my last day at Basic, the 28th, was also my half-birthday.) Those cupcakes were especially fun because of the stiff, thick layer of icing on top that you could peel off and eat separately. Ostensibly, the poured fondant is supposed to make the icing on this cake hard as well (although not as creepily, artificially hard as the Entenmann's kind), but it mostly tasted like regular frosting to me. I didn't make it pink, because what's the point? 

As you'll see from the photograph, I also tried to make the very dignified and classy-looking Basic logo out of Betty Crocker's finest electric blue frosting-in-a-tube, which I had bought at Morton Williams at 7:30 a.m. that morning. It didn't go that well, but whatever, it's the sentiment that counts. Oxford University Press, get ready to get fat!

You can find the cake recipe here and the frosting recipe here.

A Passover Surprise (The Good Kind)

Okay, we admit it, August has been a pretty weak month for the Baking Sisters. Rebecca has an infant and a toddler so she gets a pass; Rachel has been in Los Angeles helping take care of the aforementioned infant and toddler, so she also gets a pass. Basically, I have been unacceptably lame when it comes to posting. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been unacceptably lame when it comes to baking, no no no! So I’ll do my best to catch y’all up with my exciting baking adventures this week.

You know what’s the best? When you try a delicious baked good, exclaim over its baked goodness, look up the recipe, and then discover that it is, of all things, kosher for Passover. This is what happened recently in my office. Our office recently moved, and while we are now far away from most of the delicious food in the Murray Hill/Flatiron area, we are a mere block away from the delicious Francois Payard Bakery. One of my coworkers bought a fudgy chocolate cookie with nuts from FPB, and was nice enough to share it. It was so good – a little chewy, a lot fudgy. Another coworker managed to find the recipe on New York Magazine, and – behold! – it was flourless! It’s seriously awesome when that happens. So it became immediately apparent what I would be bringing in for Baked Goods Friday that week.

These cookies are seriously easy, like simple arithmetic or a loose woman. The only thing that isn’t totally straightforward is the amount of egg whites, as I learned from reading the many helpful comments on the recipe. I started out with two and, when the dough still seemed too dry, added a third. This is obviously less than the recipe calls for, but even so my cookies had a chewier, more meringue-like consistency than the ones from FPB. But I don’t think it made them taste worse, just different. Also, I know that the Baking Sisters are as a rule opposed to including nuts in baked goods, but honestly these cookies have so few ingredients that there’s barely anything in them without the nuts. I felt the nuts made it a little more substantial. (Oh, did I mention that without the nuts, there's no fat? God these cookies just keep getting better and better.) But if you’re a purist, do whatever you want, I don’t care. Just be sure to enjoy these cookies next time Passover rolls around, or even before then!

François Payard’s Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

From Chocolate Epiphany by way of New York Magazine

2 3/4 cups walnut halves
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Spread the walnut halves on a large-rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 9 minutes, until they are golden and fragrant.

(1) Let cool slightly, then transfer the walnut halves to a work surface and coarsely chop them. Position two racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and lower temperature to 320. Line two large-rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

(2) In a large bowl, whisk (or combine in an electric mixer on low speed) the confectioners’ sugar with the cocoa powder and salt followed by the chopped walnuts. While whisking (or once you change the speed to medium), add the egg whites and vanilla extract and beat just until the batter is moistened (do not overbeat or it will stiffen).

(3) Spoon the batter onto the baking sheets in 12 evenly spaced mounds, and bake for 14 to 16 minutes, until the tops are glossy and lightly cracked; shift the pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through to ensure even baking. Slide the parchment paper (with the cookies) onto 2 wire racks. Let cookies cool completely, and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.