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.

Adventures in the Kitchen: Intro to my Kitchen

I have always loved cooking. When I was little, I found an basic pound cake recipe in one of my mothers cookbooks and after making it a couple times, decided that I could make it better. I tweaked the recipe to make a vanilla pound cake, a rainbow pound cake and a cinnamon pound cake.

My pride and joy :)

I took chef's classes in high school and loved every minute of it. I was even in the FCCLA (Family, Career and Community Leaders of America) and competed in cake decorating and table setting (winning bronze and gold respectively).  In those classes, I first worked with a KitchenAid Mixer and fell in love. I kept telling my mother I wanted one and she told me when I got my first place she would buy me one. It took 8 years for that to finally become a reality.

The kitchen is just a happy place to be in my opinion and creating something delicious out of a bunch of  random ingredients is quite a fun science (and the closest I will get to being good at a real science)

So, why post about my little self's cooking past? Well, I figure that if I want you to read and take my cooking and ideas seriously, you should know my background and where I come from. I am no chef school graduate nor a food critic, I just enjoy cooking and want to share what I learn along the way.

Some facts about my kitchen:

• I like to try to cook healthy, but there will be no guarantee that every recipe that I make will be. 
• Desserts can be big in this house (especially when Mike is visiting), plus I just love to bake!
• I have been working towards trying to use organic products and products without MSGs, however,
• I am a poor teacher that lives on my own and organic can be expensive! I will be specific in my ingredients what I am using
• Also on the poor teacher route, there are few name brands or products that I am 100% loyal to (I tend to go store brand or what is on sale), I will label those as I come across them
• I love kitchen gadgets! If you know any good ones, comment away!
• Recipes that I make come from everywhere; cookbooks, Pinterest, friends and just the internet. 

I hope you enjoy the recipes that I will soon be posting and if you have any suggestions of things you would like to see please send me an email at jadisney12@gmail.com or leave a comment below!