_saturday brings.... chocolate cravings_

any good chocolate craving can be solved with these... 

mmm..gooey mess. not super appetizing. but look below...and voila! 

crispy glossy chewy chocolate goodness. and with no oil, butter or wheat. yay! 

So since I decided to more or less eliminate wheat from my diet... it's been an adventure.  Mostly an adventure in baking. I love baking, but it's been a challenge to change the way I bake to remove wheat..aka flour from the list of ingredients. Not exactly easy. Also, though a recipe is labeled "gluten-free" and "good" ..it does not mean it is! I have a feeling my baking adventures will result in many more failed recipes before the right combinations are found. Well, challenge accepted.

My first pretty successful recipe? These cookies. They have a ridiculous flaky top and chewy center. Just make sure you bake them long enough.. otherwise they will be impossible to get off the baking tray. be warned.

Flourless Chocolate Cookies

3      cups powdered sugar
2/3   cup good-quality cocoa powder
1/4   teaspoon salt
1 1/4  cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used a larger, dark chocolate chip the second     time I made them, and they were fantastic)
4     large egg whites
2     teaspoons vanilla
1/4  teaspoon almond extract (optional)

1_ Preheat oven to 350`. Line a couple baking sheets with parchment paper. Aluminum foil also works, but parchment paper is my favorite.

2_ Mix the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Add egg whites (give them a good stir first with a fork to mix them), vanilla, and almond extract (if you like almond). Stir the mixture until well-combined. It should be thick but still stir-able. Add more powdered sugar if it is too runny. Add the chocolate chips and mix throughout the batter.

3_ Spoon the batter onto baking sheets in 1 heaping tablespoon portions. Spread them out as they like to run into each other if they aren't perfectly level. By the way, they will probably look strange. I thought they looked like silly brown blobs until they came out of the oven and were magically beautiful. My sister thought the same thing... "Ang,... did you forget an ingredient?..."

4_ Bake at 350` for 14 minutes or until tops are cracked and glossy. Move the entirety (cookies and parchment-paper) to wire racks to cool slightly.Peel the cookies off the parchment carefully and set on wire rack to cool fully. If you have trouble getting them off, you probably didn't cook them quite  long enough.. but if you put them in the freezer for 10 minutes or so after they are cooled first, they usually peel off pretty well.

This should make about 2 dozen cookies, depending on your preferred cookie size.