New cookies! Beacon Hill Cookies!

[thewayne]

The recipe came from lydy last month, and I've been wanting to add a new cookie to my proverbial recipe box, so I made them Tuesday night, partly as a reward for my wife being a good doobie with the skunked dog rescue. And they are good. They're more than a bit different because they're flourless - basically it's a meringue cookie with chocolate and nuts. Slightly finicky to make, but VERY yummy!

I do need to work on portioning, I didn't know how they would rise or spread. I think I need to replace and use my medium scoop and that should work well. One batch of the recipe made all twelve of these cookies, so a smaller scoop will make more.

The recipe with comments from me is under the cut.

Beacon Hill Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 egg whites
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
3/4 cup chopped pecans

Directions
• Heat oven to 350f (180c).
• Melt chocolate over hot, not boiling water. (Or 30 seconds on High in microwave, stir then another 30 seconds.)
• Beat egg whites with a dash of salt until foamy. Gradually add sugar, beating well, then beat until stiff peaks form.
• Beat in vanilla and vinegar. Fold in melted chocolate and nuts.
• Drop by teaspoonfuls on well greased cookie sheet, or I would recommend a wire rack covered with parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10+ minutes. Remove from pan *immediately* if using cookie sheet by itself. Decorate with nuts if desired.

Notes from Wayne:
I prefer a mix of 50/50 bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Almonds or walnuts can also be used, perhaps even pistachios.

When whipping the egg whites, you might want to add a bit of Cream of Tartar to help the whites form peaks. It’s difficult to judge peak formation because the sugar makes them look different. You’ll need to scrape the bowl to get sugar off the sides and bottom and to reincorporate it into the whites.

This is an unconventional cookie as it is flourless, thus gluten-free. With folding ingredients in, it has an unusual structure and after baking appears ‘wiggly’ and not done. Let it sit on a cooling rack undisturbed for half an hour before gently peeling off and they should come off intact. The cookies are pretty delicate.

From https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/9944/beacon-hill-cookies/
Pointed out by https://lydy.dreamwidth.org/177899.html

Comments

[lydy]

They look lovely!

[thewayne]

Thank you!  And thank you for pointing me in their direction!  No telling if/when I would have discovered them otherwise.  They were certainly good, though I overbeat the whites - it was hard to tell since the sugar is already in them.  I didn't fold the chocolate in properly, so the photos didn't look like the ones that I found online, except for one.  But I found that one set, and it made me feel better.  But they were definitely good in the end, and there were no survivors, and that's what counts.  Definitely going to use a smaller scoop in the future.

[thewayne]

I recently got a similar recipe from Milk Street - haven't made it yet - and they recommend heating the egg whites and sugar over hot water to melt the sugar and get them incorporated before whisking the whites to peaks.  I'm going to be interested in trying that.  Needless to say I'll post a report including pix and the recipe when I'm done!  I just found that technique instruction to catch my attention as I had some difficulty generating peaks, I think heating them slightly could help a lot.