These Sin-Free Chocolate Chews are as close to guilt-free as a tasty cookie can be. They have zero flour for all you carb watchers, and no butter or oil either! Yet they have a wonderful, chewy, light texture and trust me, these don't taste like health food!
You might recognize these as being nearly the same as the yummy Cocoa Chewie Cookies they sell at Whole Foods. But why buy them when you can whip up your own batch with minimal time and ingredients? These are the perfect cookies to wrap up and take to your favorite hostess. We've never met anyone who didn't love them!
Sin-Free Chocolate Chews(Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour's website)
2 1/4 cups (9 ounces) confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon espresso powder [MoS note: I have always omitted this and they still turn out wonderfully!]
1 cup (3 ounces) cocoa powder, Dutch-process or natural [MoS note: your basic Hershey's will work just fine, but these really pop if you go for the good stuff!]
3 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Whisk together the sugar, salt, espresso powder, and cocoa. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, stir together the egg whites and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the egg whites, and mix at low speed of an electric mixer for 2 minutes. The batter will seem dry at first, but will become shiny and smooth as it mixes. Add chocolate chips at the end.
Cover the bowl, and refrigerate the batter for 3 hours, or up to overnight [MoS note: if you don't have time to refrigerate, it's not the end of the world!]. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Thoroughly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets. Drop the dough in ping pong-sized balls onto the prepared baking sheets; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, reversing the pans (top to bottom, bottom to top) midway through. Remove them from the oven, and cool on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.
Yield: fourteen big (3 ½") cookies.
Tip: These don't like being stored in the fridge- go for room temp! They will last about 3 days in an airtight container. Or, to really show them off, how about storing them on your counter in this fabulous crystal biscuit barrel?
Waterford Crystal Biscuit Barrel, $275
These cookies are also a hit with company! They'd be a great finish passed around the table at the end of a dinner party, or wonderful sitting out on the dessert table at a cocktail party. You could lay them out beautifully, overlapping slightly, on this simple tray:
Barona Tray, $25, Pottery Barn
We hope you love these cookies as much as we do! Give them a try this weekend and let us know how they turn out!
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