On one of our recent excursions into NYC, we stopped by Payard Bakery for some requisite macarons and a few other sweet treats. Incidentally, we tried one of their savory sandwiches and it was quite tasty. Anyway...the visit got me looking up some of Francois Payard's recipes and it brought me to these flourless chocolate cookies that have been fairly widely touted. I thought it would be fun to give them a try for myself. I think this is a good time to highlight flourless treats with Passover coming up but these are some pretty special flourless cookies to try for no reason at all.
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Payard's recipe is flourless chocolate-walnut cookies. Some people commend them for being low-fat since there's actually no chocolate (just cocoa powder) in them and only egg whites are used to bind them. What fat you do find in them is the good stuff, coming from the walnuts. But you won't find me insinuating they're some sort of "health food" because there's plenty of sugar in the mix. But the amazing thing about these cookies is their texture. Somehow, they manage to be moist, fudgy, and chewy (yes, chocolaty too) without the actual chocolate, butter, or egg yolks. They really do taste and look like brownies in cookie form! The other thing about these cookies is they are very easy to make. I mixed the batter in a large bowl, by hand, in a matter of minutes.
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When I made these, I wondered if my little guy would like them. The little one loves a chocolate cookie or brownie but he still insists he doesn't like walnuts (or other chunks of nuts in his desserts - long story, but that's not really true). So I offhandedly fed him a bite to test the waters and when he almost took my fingers off trying to inhale as big a mouthful as he could, I knew he was into them. He quickly scarfed one down and requested more, even acknowledging they were good with the walnuts.
These were so interesting that I decided to make another batch a few days later and play with the mix-in. I threw the "no actual chocolate in this recipe" mantra out the window and added some mini chocolate chips and a little bit of cocoa nibs in place of the walnuts. The result? They were good but in a side by side comparison, we clearly preferred the original toasted walnut version more (not surprisingly, the pros know what they're doing). The chocolate chips are tasty but made the cookies sweeter than I liked. The cocoa nibs added a certain level of smokiness to the cookies without the sweetness so perhaps it may be worthwhile to try what Molly at Orangette did and make a walnut-cocoa nibs version. But I think I'll stick with the original.
