Mocha Macaroons. . . I guess.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to call these cookies. Lets just say that I found a recipe for Mocha Macaroons and since I didn't have all of the ingredients I did a little improvising. They didn't turn out like they were supposed to exactly, but they are really good. They're more on the sophisticated side as they are not overpoweringly sweet and though I haven't passed them by Sanna yet, I'm pretty sure she won't like them. Perhaps if I had omitted the coffee and maybe dipped them in melted chocolate-then, perhaps she would like them-but thats not the point. Not everybody can like everything. :) 

 

I made these gluten-free so that my Dad can enjoy them. Its really easy though to turn back into gluten cookies so if you want you can just replace the amount of different flours that I used with one amount of all-purpose flour. 

  

As I said, I made these gluten free and as I said before that, I did some improvising. And since the original recipe called for 2 cups of almond meal and I only had 1 cup, well, I looked around and somehow garnered up 1 cup of a mixture of flours: coconut flour, rice flour, (at least I was pretty sure it rice flour) and teff flour...I'm not even sure what that is but I used it. :-\ 

So I mixed together egg whites and *teff flour and danced/sang along as Jonathan Foreman told me that I'm original. Yep. And so are these cookies. 

Mocha Macaroons..... or whatever you want to call them. 

The stuff you start with:

2 egg whites – unbeaten

2 cups powdered sugar

{1 cup almond meal

1/4 cup teff flour

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup rice flour} 

Or just 2 cups all-purpose flour.

(However, I guarantee you that the consistency will be different and may not turn out like mine.)

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 tablespoon instant ground espresso or coffee granules

Pinch salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

What you do with that stuff to make some really good stuff:

Preheat oven to 395 degrees. Prepare 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Put all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix until well blended. If you have a sticky, chocolaty mess then it’s perfect. Wet your hands with water and pull up a ball about the size of a small walnut, and place on prepared pans leaving at least one inch between each cookie. You will probably have to re-wet your hands several times. If you have the consistency that I had-then you'll want to use the back of a spoon and press down gently before placing in the oven.

Bake macaroons/thingamajiga's for 10 minutes. 

Let cool on the pan for about 1 or 2 minutes then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

 *I have just been informed (and no, not by Wikipedia) that teff flour is a kind of flour used over in Ethiopia. Only just recently has it become available to the US. Our sponsor child uses this flour everyday--therefore this cookie is dedicated to my Compassion sister, Atbiyanesh. <3

-Ry R.W.