Salted Flourless Chocolate Cookies (and a Month Gluten-Free)

My kitchen helper

I am about a month in to not eating any gluten; it has been a pretty good adventure so far.  I will admit I have had a few setbacks, but for the most part it has been pretty smooth.  I feel like I have explained myself and my reasons many times, but most people seem to understand (after first assuming I am doing it for weight loss.) I am not going to lie; the weight loss is a plus but not the reason. 

I finally made it back to my doctor, I explained how I was getting fed up with nothing helping (I was on three different medications) I felt like I was losing a battle.  I told her how my mom brought up celiac and cutting out gluten, and that I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it.  I was concerned with what she would tell me, but it was all positive.  She explained how I still should take my one medication, since I was diagnosed with colitis, but I should keep up with the GF diet as well.  She went on to talk to me about other patients that suffer from both diseases and how they cope.  Since I haven’t been eating gluten, none of the tests would show a positive result for celiac.  But because of the family history I shared, she said there may be a chance I do suffer from it, and even if it isn’t full blown celiac, I definitely have an intolerance.  My choices would be to start eating gluten just for the test, an endoscopy, or hold off being tested but continue eating GF.  For now I am just going to continue on.  I feel better; I don’t need a test to tell me that, at least 
not right now.

Adding chocolate chips and nuts, so serious!

I made it through Thanksgiving and now we are in full swing into the Christmas season.  We plan on having Christmas dinner at our house this year, which I am excited about since I will be controlling the menu.  I don’t plan on making the whole meal GF; I can’t deprive my husband and son of rolls that would just be mean.  I have been looking around for some different ideas for the dinner menu, but I must admit my focus has been more on the cookies.  We are suckers for cookies in our house.  Plus we are doing a cookie exchange at work, so I need to figure out what I plan on making for that.

I already tried one batch of GF cookies, in my last post, now I am going to try to venture into more…I found a lot of recipes for GF Cookies on Foodgawker, I am planning to try out a few. 

iPhone picture

Salted Flourless Chocolate Cookies

(Inspired from Meaningful Eats) 

3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 egg whites, at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

½ cup chopped pecans

Coarse Sea Salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the sugar, cocoa and salt.  Slowly add egg whites and vanilla. Once all combined, stir in the chocolate chips and pecans.  

On a greased, or lined cookie sheet, add batter a teaspoon at a time.  The cookies will spread, so unless you want large cookies, use small mounds.  Sprinkle with the coarse salt.  Bake for about 15 minutes. (I made about 36 cookies)

The flavor of these cookies were really good and chocolaty, they were chewy and crisp at the same time.  They were also very thin (they would make great ice cream sandwiches.) I am not sure if my egg whites weren't quite warm enough or what.  I may play around with them a bit to see if I can make them "fluffier".  I will make these again.

Enjoy!