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Do you have midnight cookie hankerings? I’m pretty sure you do. And even when there might be some cookie crumbs in the jar or a pack of cookies in the pantry, all you want is a fresh, warm cookie, right out of the oven.
But isn’t it annoying to get ingredients for a cookie ready when you simply want to fast forward to the eating stage? Waiting for the butter to soften is a task in itself, of course, along with the hassle of sifting the flour and baking powder together. Gah! Might as well just go off to bed and dream of cookies instead!
What if I told you I’m sharing with you a three-ingredient recipe that you can whip up in no time? To top that we’re even going to make miniature size hazelnut cookies, so they get baked a lot sooner. This recipe, my friends, is going to be the only one you need when you crave for a delicious snack and haven’t much time at hand.
I’m addicted to these cookies. Addicted, I tell you. I have made them thrice in two days and I just can’t stop eating them. I never considered myself to be a cookie fiend, but a lot has changed since I put this hazelnut cookie in my mouth. That too without feeling an ounce of guilt – these are flourless butterless cookies! In addition to becoming a fan of the flavour, I’ve a new found respect for egg whites. They make the flourless cookie so crunchy!
I love these flourless cookies plain, I love these flourless cookies sandwiched with a smear of Nutella and best of all, I love these flourless cookies with ice cream. Take a scoop of either chocolate or vanilla ice cream and crush these crunchy bits of hazelnut cookie goodness on top of it. You will be floored.
Not only is this delicious to eat (but then, anything with hazelnuts is!), the smell is phenomenal. There have been times I’ve just opened the jar of hazelnut cookies to get a whiff of the toasted hazelnuts. The fragrance is nothing short of intoxicating.
Of course, you don’t need to wait for a midnight cookie craving to make these.
Flourless Butterless Italian Hazelnut Cookies (aka Brutti ma Buoni)
Adapted from: Eating Well
Yield: 40-45 cookies, 1 inch in diameter
Ingredients:
1 cup hazelnuts, lightly toasted and skinned
½ cup sugar
2 large egg whites
a pinch of salt
½ tsp vanilla extract
Sliced hazelnuts for garnish (optional)
Equipment: Silpat (because you really don’t want to line bakig sheets, and then struggle to get this piece of heaven off it. An absolute must!)
Method:
- Preheat to 160°C/325°F. Line two baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper.
- Pulse nuts and sugar in a food processor until finely ground. Scrape into a large bowl.
- Beat egg whites and salt in another large bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form.
- Using a silicone spatula, fold the egg whites into the nut mixture. Add vanilla and gently but thoroughly mix until combined.
- Transfer the mixture to a disposable piping bag and snip off the tip. Pipe the batter on the Silpat, making sure to keep a uniform size under 1 inch in diameter, as well as maintaining a finger’s distance between cookies.
- Tap the baking sheet a few times on the counter, this will help spread the cookie and give a flat cookie with a good snap.
- Sprinkle the cookie batter with the sliced hazelnuts.
- Place the baking sheet in the centre of the oven and bake until golden brown, 5-7 minutes. Switch the pans back to front. Keep an eye on it; it goes from golden brown to brown very quickly, given the tiny size.
- Let cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Gently transfer the butterless cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store in an airtight container for upto a week. But I bet it won’t last that long.
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I am extremely frugal when it comes to using my last 10 grams of lavender; I even packed it up and put it away in the freezer to save until the time I was certain that my next batch is on its way. Just recently I found a huge stash of very fragrant lavender when I was rearranging my cabinet. It sat somewhere at the back, tucked away, with a bunch of other things I didn’t remember I had like Hungarian paprika (suggestions to use this?), pearl sugar and some very adorable cupcake decorations.
I’m one happy, happy girl to have so much lavender at hand. As soon as I asked for things to do with it on
Facebook, I got some really interesting suggestions like lavender ice cream, lavender vanilla cake, lavender granita, lavender iced tea, macarons and lavender lemon shortbread (which I hope to try out over the next few weeks1). But what I really had on my mind were honey lavender madeleines. Especially because I’ve had the mould for a few months now, and I’ve been itching to use it!
For the madeleines, I started off with a honey madeleine recipe from
Paris Sweets. Instead of the lemon zest, I used the lavender. And I didn’t just throw the lavender in the batter but came up with a pretty ingenious way to infuse all the lavender goodness into the batter: I first rubbed the lavender in my hands for it to get all nice and fragrant and then I put it in the pan with the butter that needs to be melted. This way the butter absorbs all the flavours beautifully and with the heat, the lavender releases more flavour! To sound more exotic, this recipe could actually be called honey madeleines with lavender infused butter.
I used a
tin pan for large madeleines, but the smaller ones look adorable too. While buttering and flouring the tin might be an additional step, just please stay away from the
silicone moulds - they make the madelines look so artificial with the shiny surface and uneven browning. The
dark non-stick variety might solve the problem, but you will have darker madeleines.
How did they turn out? Little bites of goodness! My hands are still fragrant with the lavender I rubbed, and my fingers still buttery (and now the keyboard) with the half dozen madeleines I just snacked on. Will I be making them again? Yes, tomorrow!
Honey Lavender Madeleines
Yield: 12 large madeleines or 36 small ones.
3/4th cup / 105g flour
½ tsp double action baking powder
5 tbsp / 70g butter
1 tsp lavender, rubbed to release flavour
2 eggs
1/3rd cup / 65g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp honey
- Sift together the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
- In a saucepan, melt the butter with the lavender. Let it cool.
- In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale and think, about 2-4 minutes.
- Add in the vanilla extract.
- With a silicone spatula, fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter and honey.
- Mix until just combined.
- Transfer to a disposable piping bag and clip the end. Let this rest in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. (you can keep it upto two days – the longer the better – this gives the madeleine it’s characteristic hump.)
- Butter and flour a madeleine pan, covering every millimeter of it, else the madeleine won’t come off easily.
- Pipe the batter into the madeleine pan until almost full.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 200C / 400F for 10-11 minutes or until your finger springs back when you touch the centre of the madeleine. The baking time for smaller madeleines will be shorter by 3-4 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and eat the madeleines! If you’re going to be storing it for later, then transfer to an airtight container as soon as they’ve cooled.
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While I’m not doing the 12 days of cookies, I’ve put my favourite cookies together in one post just for you. It’s going to be hard to choose one recipe, so save yourself the ordeal of picking just one, and go make all of them!
Black Forest Cookies: As the name suggests, these are filled with all that goes into a black forest cake – cherries, white chocolate, dark chocolate (a HUGE amount, at that) to give some seriously, sinful chocolate cookies.This recipe is from
Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, one of my favourite baking books.
Nutella Pinwheel Cookies: These are the most popular cookies on my blog. Why wouldn’t they be? For everyone loves Nutella!
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Or, instead, this post should be titled ‘I Love Dorie Greenspan’.
The more recipes I try from her book
Baking: From My Home to Yours, the more I feel like I don’t need any other baking book. I love how each recipe is written so beautifully with personal notes from experience and ideas for variation. There hasn’t been a single recipe that hasn’t worked for me yet. Be it the
Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes, or the soft and chewy
Chocolate Chip Cookies (you must click through, just for the pictures of the giant chocolate chips!), or the
Apple Crumb Cake which I adapted from her Blueberry Crumb Cake recipe.
My latest venture from her book is the Chocolate Chip Shortbread. While I skipped the espresso in the recipe, given my aversion to coffee, you should definitely go ahead and add 1 tablespoon of espresso dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water and mix it in along with the vanilla. Also, while Ms. Greenspan uses unsalted butter, I would really recommend using salted butter for this recipe so you get the more evenly distributed taste instead of simply sprinkling it on top of the cookies, as this
NY Times article on Chocolate Chip cookie suggests.
And something totally cool about the recipe is that you roll it in a Ziploc bag – gives you the most perfectly even edges so there is no re-rolling the scraps! (I used cling film for one batch because I was out of Ziploc bags.)
With one batch, I put the cookies back into the oven for another 3 minutes after they had cooled. Made them even more crisp and literally lived up to the name of a biscuit (twice baked).
The verdict? Supremely buttery. The shortbread cookies got over sooner than I wanted them to. I’ve made them twice already. I’m going to make them with roasted hazelnuts the next time.
Chocolate Chip Shortbread
Yield: 32 cookies
2 sticks / 8 oz. /225g salted butter, at room temperature
2/3 / 130g cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups / all-purpose flour
4 oz. / 112g bittersweet chocolate (finely chopped, or 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting (optional)
- Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed for about 3 minutes, until the mixture is very smooth. Beat in the vanilla (and espresso, if you are using), then reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, mixing only until it disappears into the dough. Don’t work the dough much once the flour is incorporated. Fold in the chopped chocolate with a rubber or silicone spatula.
- Using the spatula, transfer the soft, sticky dough to a gallon-size zipper-lock plastic bag. Put the bag on a flat surface, leaving the top open, and roll the dough into a rectangle that’s 1/4 inch thick. As you roll, turn the bag occasionally and lift the plastic from the dough so it doesn’t cause creases. When you get the right size and thickness, seal the bag, pressing out as much air as possible, and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or for up to 2 days.
- Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 325 F/160C. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
- Put the plastic bag on a cutting board and slit it open. Turn the firm dough out onto the board (discard the bag) and, using a ruler as a guide and a sharp knife, cut the dough into 1 – 1.5 inch squares. Transfer the squares to the baking sheets and carefully prick each one twice with a fork, gently pushing the tines through the cookies until they hit the sheet.
- Bake for 15-17 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. The shortbreads will be very pale–they shouldn’t take on much color. Transfer the cookies to a rack.
- If you’d like, dust the cookies with confectioners’ sugar while they are still hot. Cool the cookies to room temperature before serving.
P.S. To double the fun, try this delicious chocolate chip cake!
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