flourless chocolate cookies

This week has been a Whirl. Wind. After three vet visits, an abundance of assorted tests, and a couple thousand dollars, we found out yesterday that our sweet Lena girl has cancer. We have seen evidence of her age lately but it made us scared when she pretty much stopped eating these last couple weeks. Ugh. So now, post-vet, we have a lot of sad information and a lot of decisions to make. In good news, we are now armed with some drugs to ease her nausea and help her appetite, so she's slowly, gingerly eating and getting a little of her energy back. She mostly still has her bright eyes and spirit but this morning as she rested she just looked depressed. I tested out all her favorite words (ball, walk, cookie) and didn't get any perk out of her. It broke my heart. But then a little while later, David and I took her to the park and felt so happy to see her walk about and sniff around and even smile a little. She found a dirty shard of a tennis ball in a pile of leaves that she wanted us to throw for her and it was the best sign we've seen in a while. So now we're in this little limbo: kissing on her as much as humanly possible while we treat her symptoms and figure out our options. It's a roller coaster of sadness and denial and cookies. I'm enjoying the denial. And the cookies.

Why do the cookies help so much?

Love to you,
Jolie*

*has the nerve to (perhaps inappropriately) work dog cancer into cookie-recipe blog posts
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Flourless Chocolate Cookies
yields about 30

Have you had the flourless chewy chocolate cookies from Starbucks? They are so crazy good with their crunchy exterior and chewy interior. And super chocolatey-ness. This is my attempt at recreating them. I dare you to try and eat just one. No matter how many you eat, I bet they make you feel better:)


2 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (either dutch-processed or not. DP will give you that dark oreo-cookie chocolate flavor. Both are delicious)
1/2 t kosher salt
3 egg whites, very lightly beaten (until just a little frothy on top)
1 t vanilla
1 cup walnut halves, toasted and finely chopped
3/4 cup chopped best-quality dark chocolate or chocolate chips

Line a cookie sheet with parchment and preheat oven to 350F. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, cocoa and salt. Ditch the whisk. Stir in the egg whites with a spoon or fork. This will seem futile in the beginning but trust me, just keep gently stirring and it will all come together. Add the vanilla and then fold in the nuts and chopped chocolate. The dough will be like thick brownie batter. Drop by tablespoonfuls (this is important--you don't want these too big or they're hard to remove from the parchment), 2" apart and bake for 13-14 minutes. You want them shiny and cracked on top. Remove from the oven and let cool COMPLETELY before attempting to remove them from the parchment. You can slide the parchment paper onto a rack so they cool faster but this is not necessary. Use a spatula or gently peel them off the paper with your fingers.