Passover and cookies

Apologies for the slight delay in posting, but I’ve been… on vacation! More about that later. For now, cookies!!! A friend hosted a number of us for the first seder of Passover (last Monday). It was lovely, as always, and her matzo ball soup was incredible. Apparently matzo ball lovers fall into two camps: dense or fluffy. I have never met a matzo ball I didn’t like, but our host’s (of the dense variety) are amazing. I volunteered to make dessert. This is can be a rather risky undertaking, as Passover requires that you not use flour – or rather that if your recipe calls for flour that you use matzo (cake) meal. I was initially inspired by another Smitten Kitchen recipe, this one for hazelnut chocolate thumbprint cookies. After I had decided to make them, I saw that my page-a-day calendar featured chocolate macaroons as their recipe for the weekend (likely recognizing the need for flourless desserts…). I realized that with only a few more ingredients, I could make both! The results were delicious, though the group was split on which were better.

The chocolate centers on the thumbprint cookies didn't come out as beautifully as those that inspired me (perhaps because I didn't have quite enough chocolate chips so they look a bit more like nipples than I'd really intended), and they didn't melt quite the same way, but they were delicious. Sort of crumbly like shortbread and very hazelnutty...

I think I overcooked the macaroons a bit, but anything with that much chocolate is delicious, and the bulk food store provides an excellent source of quite good chocolate chips for this sort of thing. They were a little tougher than I would have liked, but were so chocolate-y and coconutty that it didn't matter.