TWD: Cafe Volcano Cookies

Now doesn't that name just scare you a bit? There was no photo of this finished product. I had no idea what to expect. It was a pretty simple recipe with ingredients I had on hand, so it had that going for it. What the heck. I'll try it.

Luckily, we made sables last week, which called for egg yolks. This week's recipe needed egg whites. I love how that worked out!

This was a meringue-like cookie. Instead of beating the egg whites, however, we warmed them up with sugar and, in my case, cocoa. The original recipe called for espresso powder (hence the cafe part of the name). But the boy and girl are not fans of coffee things, so I went with cocoa.

I also used mostly toasted almonds and pistachios in place of the nuts Dorie called for. Since both my nut varieties were pre-toasted, I had even fewer steps to make these!

The whole recipe was made in one saucepan and then baked on a silicon mat. It was close to the easiest Dorie recipe yet. The resulting recipe was surprisingly good. The toasty flavor of the nuts went very well with the cocoa. And I loved the crunchy texture of the cookie. I made a half batch, and it disappeared within a day.

You can see how the cookies is reminiscent of a craggy lava field. But much tastier.

Since I used the girl's painted bowl last week, I had to use the boy's this week.

Thanks to MacDuff of The Lonely Sidecar for picking this one. I never would have tried it on my own. It's definitely an option for those extra egg whites left over from the sables that I have to make again.