Flourless chocolate, hazelnut, macadamia and cranberry cookies

Another flourless recipe for my sister – this time, rich dark chocolate cookies for Christmas, loaded with hazelnuts, macadamia nuts and dried cranberries.  They are lovely and soft and cakey, more like brownies than biscuits – really good served warm with a scoop of my Christmas Pudding Ice Cream!

I’ve based my recipe on a chocolate and walnut cookie recipe by famous patissier Francois Payard.

Ingredients 

100g / 3 ½ oz cocoa powder

350g / 12 oz icing sugar

Pinch salt

100g / 3 ½ oz hazelnuts

100g / 3 ½ oz macadamia nuts

100g / 3 ½ oz dried cranberries

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

1 tbsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Place racks in the upper and bottom thirds of the oven and preheat to 175°C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
2. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, shaking the sheet occasionally. Watch carefully; nuts burn quickly.
3. Once the nuts have cooled, chop them roughly.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the cocoa powder, icing sugar, salt, chopped toasted nuts and dried cranberries and beat on low speed for a minute.
5. With the mixer running, slowly add the egg whites and vanilla extract, and beat at medium speed for 3 minutes, until the mixture has thickened slightly and looks lumpy. Do not overmix, or the egg whites will thicken too much.
6. Use a small ice cream scoop to scoop the batter onto the prepared baking sheets. Scoop 5 cookies onto each sheet, spacing them about 3 inches apart so that they don't stick when they spread.
7. As soon as you’ve placed the cookies in the oven, reduce the temperature to 160°C.
8. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pans front to back and top to bottom about halfway through baking; small, thin cracks will appear on the surface of the cookies.
9. Pull the parchment paper with the cookies onto a wire cooling rack, and cool completely before removing the cookies from the paper.