I went back this week to the “Best of Fine Cooking – Chocolate” 2006 edition of Fine Cooking magazine and chose another recipe based purely on how badly I wanted to eat the photo on the page. These cookies are similar to the Chocolate Brownie Recipes from a month ago but with more of a normal cookie consistency and with walnuts instead of pecans. The title kind of gave that much away, but the most important part is that these cookies are deliciously rich and packed with chocolate.
First things first, many thanks to Leanne at Healthful Pursuit for this recipe, which I followed in substance if not exactly to the letter. Before moving to Canada I’d never heard of nanaimo bars but I wish I’d encountered them a long time ago. I put them somewhere between a chocolate bar and a brownie, with great potential for versatility on flavor, and I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to take a shot at making my own.
The other thing they have great potential for is hitting various points for allergic or otherwise preferential dietary choices. The original recipe hit raw, vegan (and thus dairy-free), gluten-free, and no refined sugar, which is a remarkable feat, but I decided to take a swing at going for five points and added nut-free to the list.
The end result needs some work, but hey, that’s why I’m calling this one experimental!
My thanks this week go to Laura’s Sweet Spot for this recipe. I had an inexplicable hankering the other day for maple walnut cookies and so I asked the internet for help and came across a number of options. Some were “maple spice” cookies, others involved icing, but her recipe is straight-forward and simple and that’s what I was looking for. I was also completely taken by her statement that flavored pancake syrup is insulting to the maple trees – I couldn’t agree more!
My thanks go to The Chic Life for this recipe for coconut macaroons, which I used as a basis to get the proportions right. I was searching for a macaroon recipe for which the ingredients were a close match to the “Cocoroons” brand of macaroons, which are a little hard to come by but are simply amazing. Most of the recipes I found involved egg whites, which Cocoroons don’t have on account of being raw, vegan, and gluten-free all at the same time. The Chic Life’s recipe was an almost perfect match though, and I only tweaked the recipe slightly by changing the sweeteners.
This recipe is courtesy of Fine Cooking magazine, and it’s from their “Best of Fine Cooking – Chocolate” 2006 edition. Warning: any of their “Best of Chocolate” magazines are fairly dangerous things to flip through if you’re trying to stay on a diet.
Gratuitous close-up shot
Simply put, the name for these cookies is perfect. The proportion of chocolate far exceeds any other ingredient, the consistency is that of a brownie, and the form is that of a cookie. Also, they taste fantastic, being a little on the rich side on account of all that lovely chocolate.
Regarding Recipes 