Flourless Hazelnut and Chocolate Cookies

Cookies without flour… really?

I have a confession to make: when I first came across flourless cookie recipes on social media, I was extremely skeptical.

To me it was almost a contradiction in terms. How could you possibly make real cookies without using flour? How could you get back everything that makes a good cookie so good — its texture, its crispness, its generosity, and that very particular feeling when you bite into one?

Honestly, I did not believe in it. Not technically, and not in terms of taste either. It seemed completely improbable to me.

And yet my pastry chef's curiosity eventually won out. I wanted to understand, to experiment, and above all to see for myself whether this slightly crazy idea could really work.

So I took inspiration from the recipes I had found on social media, while reworking them in my own way. In particular I introduced chia seeds, which, once rehydrated, form a natural gel that binds the ingredients and gives the dough cohesion, without using eggs.

My aim was to keep the essence of these surprising recipes while ending up with a real cookie: indulgent, generous and a pleasure to eat.

And for this first adventure I chose an ingredient I am especially fond of: the hazelnut.

The hazelnut in all its glory

If you know me a little, you are probably aware that I am passionate about hazelnuts. I love their deep flavor, their natural sweetness, their character, and the incomparable richness they bring to desserts.

So picture a dough made mostly of hazelnut butter, enriched with chopped hazelnuts, generous chunks of chocolate and a touch of coconut sugar… The result is quite simply incredible.

What I particularly like about this recipe is that the hazelnut is not just a flavor added to a preparation. It is not diluted among a multitude of other ingredients that would end up muting its taste.

Here, the hazelnut is the real star. You find it in all its intensity, with a clear, powerful and wonderfully rich flavor. The chocolate comes along to accompany it, while the coconut sugar adds its lightly caramelized notes. It is a pairing I find absolutely irresistible.

And I can assure you that when I tasted my first cookies, I was completely won over.

I have since had the chance to share them with many people, and their reaction has been unanimous: they were absolutely thrilled. At the first bite came surprise, pleasure, and above all that same impression — these cookies were incredibly good.

What amused me most was their astonishment when I explained that the cookies were made without any flour. Hard to imagine when you discover such intensity of flavor and so much indulgence in a single cookie.

Which goes to show that sometimes you have to question your own certainties, even in pastry.

A nod to the history of the cookie

The cookie as we know it today has become one of the most emblematic treats in American baking.

It was in the 1930s that Ruth Wakefield, at her establishment in Massachusetts, popularized a recipe that became famous: the chocolate chip cookie.

Ever since, the cookie has never stopped being reinvented. Crisp, chewy, thick, generously loaded, it lends itself to endless variations. But what I like about that history is precisely this freedom to create.

Because, in the end, why should a cookie necessarily contain flour?

With this hazelnut version, free of any grain flour, I am offering another way to find all the generosity of this hugely popular cookie, while letting the ingredients express their flavors fully.

My advice on choosing the ingredients

The hazelnut butter. I strongly recommend using a plain, untoasted hazelnut butter rather than one made from roasted hazelnuts. Personally I would advise against the latter here: with the large amount of hazelnut in this recipe, I prefer to keep a softer, more natural flavor, without accentuating the roasted notes any further.

The chocolate. You have two options: use regular chips, or cut up a bar of chocolate yourself into chunks, large or small. Small pieces will spread more evenly through the dough, while big shards will give lovely bursts of chocolate as you eat. Choose according to your appetite.

Total weight of the mixture: 402 g, which comes to about 50 g of dough per cookie before baking (50.25 g exactly).