July 23: Egg-, Gluten-, and Dairy-Free Chocolate Shortbread!

My first dare: bake something without eggs and wheat, and preferably without dairy, too.

Um, what?

I'd made two flourless desserts in my life before, and one had cream and the other was a meringue cookie.
So, I set out with my trusty Google and found...nothing that didn't require nut flour.

Since I'm trying to do this all with common ingredients that pretty much everyone has in their kitchen, and I was doing this with 3 hours to go until I had to head to work with the cookies, I wasn't about to do that.

Instead, I found a basic shortbread recipe - a recipe I already knew was eggless. From there, it was a few easy modifications to get to the delicious, four-ingredient cookie that takes less than an hour to get from the bowl to your mouth!

About to go in the oven!

I made them soft and chewy, but they can be made any level of crunchiness - just leave them in the oven for longer. They're incredibly rich, so much so so to be described as "an emotional journey" by one of the other actors (there were barely even any crumbs in the container by the time I left the rehearsal).

Here's the recipe!

1 cup margarine (butter if you are OK with dairy, but it's interchangeable)

2 ½ cups cocoa

¾ cup brown sugar, or to taste (I prefer my cookies very, very cacao-rich; if you like yours sweeter, add more sugar)

1 tsp vanilla extract or to taste

Preheat Oven to 325 degrees.

Cream margarine, brown sugar, and vanilla together until very, very creamy. Add cocoa and mix until completely mixed. At first, it will get very fine, almost like a thick flour. Keep mixing - it takes a couple of minutes. It will eventually start getting into thicker and thicker grain, then it will pebble, and slowly clump all together. By the end, it will be a very, very thick batter – you will probably have to poke it out of the mixer. Use an electric mixer for this – it’s far too thick to do it by hand.

Roll out dough on parchment paper and cut into whatever shape you want and place on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet and bake.

The cookies will begin to get very soft, and then will firm up slightly. Take them out only once they have begun to firm up  for them to be nice and chewy. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Makes upwards of 2 dozen cookies, depending on size and shape of cookies..