Adventures in the Kitchen: Flourless Fudge Cookies

Mike and I are motivating each other to eat healthy. We find that whenever we are together, we tend to eat whatever we want. We eat out more and eat junk more. Since he left for his core rotations, we have been working together but separately to come up with a healthy eating regimen that way we can stick to it when we visit each other.

Part of our regimen is that we get one day a week to be our "cheat day", meaning that we can go over our calories deliberately and indulge a bit. This may be the day we have a few drinks, eat out or have a little extra dessert.

Entering this past week, I had my meals planned out and knew what I would cook when. After planning everything, I realized I did not really give myself a cheat day. The worst thing I was making was the Corn Chowder, so I decided to make that my cheat day and I would decide how to indulge when the day got there.

The week went by and Friday finally arrived. I made my chowder and it was great, but outside of having some chocolate milk at breakfast and throwing some bacon on my salad, I really would not consider myself having a "cheat day". Heck, I didn't even reach my calorie goal with everything I ate.

I wanted something sweet, but not candy, and I really did not have anything to fill that craving. I also did not have a wide variety of baking ingredients. I searched my Pinterest boards and finally came across a recipe that I had the basic ingredients for. The recipe was from kingarthurflour.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cocoa Powder
• 3 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (gluten Free if you are trying to make them that way)

The other ingredient that could have been added was 1 teaspoon of espresso powder, but I did not add this as I really do not like coffee.

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 365. Grease two baking sheets. 
2. Stir the ingredients until smooth, scraping the bowl as you stir. 
3. Drop the soft, batter-like dough onto the baking sheets in 1 1/2 inch circles. 
4. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. They will spread out, become shiny and some may have a cracked look on top. 
5. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the pans. 

The directions were easy to follow and yielded 16 cookies. They were not too sweet and the chocolate powder that I used really gave them a strong flavor, but as a quick and easy dessert, I was quite pleased.

Flourless Fudge Cookies

Makes 16 3" cookies
Calories: 88 per cookie


Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cocoa Powder
• 3 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (gluten Free if you are trying to make them that way.

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 365. Grease two baking sheets. 
2. Stir the ingredients until smooth, scraping the bowl as you stir. 
3. Drop the soft, batter-like dough onto the baking sheets in 1 1/2 inch circles. 
4. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. They will spread out, become shiny and some may have a cracked look on top. 
5. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the pans.