Chewy glutenfree almond cookies made by mistake

You know how you try out a recipe and you fail miserably? Yeah, that is how I ended up with my cookies today. My kid wanted the Dutch version of macaroons, we call them "bitterkoekjes"as they are naturally glutenfree. So i looked for a recipe online and found one i thought was easy and failproof. Well, it wasn't, but that was mostly my own fault. I found out i didn't have enough icing sugar so I used some granulated sugar as well, figuring that would work too. Fault number 1. Then recipe said to use 2 eggwhites, but as my kid accidentally cracked three, I thought, what the heck, let's use all three. Fault number two. And then when i started to whip the egg whites, they wouldn't stiffen at all. If it was the white eggs (that i never ever use) or something else, i'll never know, but headstrong me thought some baking soda would make the cookies rise instead. Eeeehhhhrmmm.. yeah, that was mistake number 3. Anyway... instead of fluffy macaroons, I ended up with these. And you know what? They are yummy!!!! 

Here's the original recipe so you can try to make the perfect glutenfree macaroons. In Italic i've added my mistakes, so you can also recreate my chewy almond cookies if that's more your thing. :-)

Ingredients

• 200 g (7 oz) of peeled almonds (I buy ground almonds all ready they call it almond flour, much easier)
• 400 g (14 oz) of icing sugar (now, i used 200 grams (7 oz) of icing sugar & 200 grams ( 7 oz) of fine granulated sugar)
• 1 tablespoon of corn flour (the original recipe said wheat flour, but that is not entering my house) 
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 egg whites (i used 3)
• almond essence or zest of 1 lemon (I used both, maybe mistake number 4 ;-))
• 1 teapoon of baking soda

Instructions

1. Grind the peeled almonds in a food processor with half of the sugar (I mixed in the granulated sugar), the cornflour, cornstarch, lemon zest and essence. (or mix the ready made almond flour with the other ingredients)
2. Beat the egg whites with the other half of the sugar (I used the icing sugar with the eggwhites) until very stiff. (well, i failed miserably here so i added the baking soda to the mixture in the next step)
3. Spatula almond mixture into a foamy mass.
4. Make small balls with oiled hands and place them on baking paper / baking sheet.
5. Flatten them with a wet tea towel. This creates cracks in baking.
6. Bake them in a preheated oven at 200 degrees centigrade (400 degrees fahrenheit) in about 20 minutes until brown and tender. (or crispy in my case :-D)
7. Let them cool on the paper. Mine kinda stuck to the paper and i needed a spatual to get them off. 

Enjoy! 

Ps. Let me know if you manage to make the macaroons instead of crispy, chewy cookies, please. :-D