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18th century Chocolate Puffs from The Hamilton Cookbook

Chocolate Puffs

Recipe shared with permission of publisher. From Kumin: These tiny sweets are a cross between cookies and candy. They are crisp, intensely chocolatey, and addictive.

Ingredients

  • 18 T (1 cup + 2 tablespoons; 213 grams) superfine sugar
  • 5 ¼ T (1/4 cup + 1¼ tablespoons; 28.35 g) unsweetened cocoa, preferably Dutch processed
  • 1 egg white
  • optional - pinch of cream of tartar

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 225° F/107° C. Set aside two parchment-lined cookie sheets.
  2. In a medium-small bowl, whisk together the sugar and cocoa until they are a uniform color. Set the mixture aside.
  3. With a hand beater, stand mixer, or clean whisk, whip the egg white until it is very frothy and beginning to stiffen. (When using a hand or stand mixer to whip egg whites, start at a low speed and slowly raise the speed to medium. Do not use the higher speeds because egg whites whipped that way are less stable.) If desired, add a pinch of cream of tartar to help the egg white froth and stiffen. Once the egg white reaches the soft peak stage, slowly add the sugar/cocoa mixture while continuing to beat the egg white. The result should be a thick paste.
  4. Wet your hands slightly and form the batter into small coins about ¾-inches (2 centimeters) in diameter. Place them on the parchment-lined cookie sheets and bake for 1-1½ hours.
  5. Store the cookies in a tightly covered container.

Recipe Notes

In my email communication with the author, she also offered this advice after I had made the cookies:

One piece of advice - on the last few batches I made, I left the formed cookies sitting on the parchment sheets for about 30 minutes before putting the in the oven. They seemed to puff up more that way, and I baked them for only about 60-65 minutes. At 90 minutes (1&1/2 hours), they are much crunchier.