An Accidental Grocery Store Purchase Made These Fudgy Cookies Even Better
Even though I think my husband prefers hanging out with me to eating chocolate, his love affair with chocolate is admittedly much longer than ours. So when I came across Southern Living's Fudgy Flourless Chocolate-Pecan Cookies online last year, I had to make them.
I'm lucky enough to not have any food intolerances or allergies, so I had never made a flourless dessert, and I was interested to try this recipe. The cookies were extremely easy to make and a huge hit with our friends. The recipe name was accurate in calling these crunchy-outside, soft-inside cookies "fudgy."
For the first Saturday of college football this year, our friends were putting out a spread. My husband smoked some pork tenderloin, another friend served brisket, there was of course macaroni and cheese, and I made Southern Living's Creamy Broccoli Slaw and Fresh Fruit Salad to add a little color to the table. I wanted to bring something sweet as well, but I needed a simple, quick recipe I could make Saturday morning before the game. Upon inspecting our baking supplies, I realized I had all the ingredients to repeat those amazing Fudgy Flourless Chocolate-Pecan Cookies.
As the oven preheated, I completed a little mise en place practice, as I always do before baking. In prepping my ingredients, I realized that my husband had accidentally grabbed extra large eggs at the store that week. I know that baking is a science, and I take that science seriously. Whether it's measuring flour correctly, using salted vs. unsalted butter, or choosing the correct baking pan, I always follow dessert recipes as precisely as possible. However, when I discovered our extra large egg issue, I let this one ride. The only liquid ingredients in this recipe are egg whites (which are whisked until frothy) and a bit of vanilla extract, so the batter is super thick. Since I made these cookies once before, I figured that a smidge of extra liquid from the extra large egg whites wouldn't hurt. Luckily for our tailgate crowd, I was right!
Even though I don't recommend swapping extra large eggs for large in most (or possibly any other) recipes, in this case, it was a happy accident. With that tiny addition, the batter was much easier to work with, and the texture of the cookies was somehow even better than the first time I made them. They retained the crisp-on-the-outside, gooey-on-the-inside consistency but were a little more uniform than the last time. Immediately after trying one of the cookies, my friend's mom asked for the recipe.
If any bakers out there are cringing at my misstep, don't be alarmed: I plan on using regular large eggs for all future dessert endeavors. But just this once, a grocery store mix-up turned into an unintentional success.
Recipe: Fudgy Flourless Chocolate-Pecan Cookies
Have you ever bought an incorrect ingredient that actually made a recipe taste better? Let us know in the comments!
