{TWD} Cafe Volcano Cookies

It is Tuesday once again, which means tasty treats are making their way from my house to work. Thank you to MacDuff of The Lonely Sidecar for this amazingly simple recipe. You can go to her site to get the recipe or you can purchase Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours.

When the recipes for the month came out and I read the title my thoughts immediately turned to dark flowy chocolate spilling from a soft chocolaty cookie. Then I read the ingredients and kind of scratched my head. How could the 5 ingredients that included 2 kinds of nuts, sugar, egg whites and espresso powder make the cookie that I saw in my head? They couldn't, but they did make a lovely crunchy meringuey cookie. Hubby and I have started on a diet...I know, right during the holidays is a perfect time for that....so I only kept a few of these at home and took the rest to work.

Last week I made Sables and immediately made these. The sables required 2 egg yolks and these required 2 egg whites. It was a no brainer to do them at the same time. Thankfully I actually had almonds and pecans in my cabinet...I am not sure how long they had been in there but they hadn't passed the expiration date so I figured they were fine.

I toasted the almonds and the pecans together and didn't bother to let them cool before throwing them in the pot with the rest of the ingredients. I probably should have let the other ingredients warm up so the sugar was dissolved before throwing the nuts in but the directions didn't say to do that. I was quite skeptical that these were going to turn out even close to edible, but I should know by now that things I think will be terrible will be really good.

These turned into a light, airy, if rather crunchy cookie. Can all of those descriptive words go together? Please forgive my made photography skillz. I was trying not to take flash photos of my cookies but I didn't have any natural light...I really need a light box (hint hint!). :)

When I took these to work I really though they would be gobbled up quickly. For some reason it took longer for these to go but the people that ate them really liked them. I had one instructor tell me they were horrible so he needed another one to make sure they weren't poisoned. My kind of humor! :)

I am not a nut girl..I generally go by the rule, if it doesn't need nuts I am not going to put them in and kind of feel like brownies with nuts are a sin against nature. However, I really liked these a lot. I am glad I took them to work because I would have made myself sick eating them at home. If you need a good easy recipe, this fits the bill.